I got a telegram that said: YOU HAVE BEEN INDEFINITELY SUSPENDED. COACH PAUL W. BRYANT. The next day, I got one from Joe Namath. It said: HE MEANS IT. He had done the same thing to Joe two or three years earlier when Joe was a hot-rod player.
I went back to school, went to summer school. Then I had to do the hardest damn thing that I’ve ever had to do in my life. I had to go to Coach Bryant’s office and ask him if I could get back on the team. That couch in front of his desk was really low and soft. You sat on it, and it was like you were sitting on the floor. And his desk was raised, so he was looking straight down at you. I said, “Coach Bryant, I’m now eligible to play in the SEC and my grade-point average is what it should be. Everything is in line and I just wondered if I could come back out for the team this fall.” Coach was famous for walking around in that houndstooth cap, talking from the bottom of his shoes, smoking a nonfiltered Chesterfield and spitting tobacco off the end of his lip. He looked me dead in the eyes, with that deep, deep, intimidating, imposing voice and said, “You don’t deserve to be on this team.” I said, “Well, I’m coming back out here anyway.”
At Alabama, the color jersey you wore designated the team that you were on. If you wore a red jersey you were on the first team; white jersey, second team; blue jersey, third team. The last color jersey you could get was a brown one because Coach Bryant called people turds if they screwed up. I was just all-SEC, All-American, most valuable player in the 1967 Sugar Bowl, and I went to get into my locker. In my locker was a brown jersey.
