The Junction Boys: How 10 Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Champion Team Kindle Edition

The story of the Junction boys, Bear Bryant's first team at Texas A&M, is Texas legend, almost mythology by now. It's a compelling story but one not done justice here. The author, Jim Dent, is addicted to cliche and writes like the sports guy at a small-town newspaper.But worse than the prose is the overall shallowness of the book. Dent, so intent on furthering the legend, never asks any of the questions a normal person, much less a professional journalist, would ask. Bear Bryant was, famously, iconically, obsessed with character and discipline and toughness and staying power. That is, he was obsessed with his players having those attributes. Personally, he a) openly and admittedly cheated, paying for players, among other infractons b) couldn't remain faithful to his wife c) couldn't quit drinking or smoking and also had some gambling issues later in life. Dent never even wonders at the paradox, hypocrisy or irony of any of this. In the final chapter, Dent gives some details on players who went on to be professionally successful and who credited Bryant with making them so. Did these men also follow Bryant in that regard? Were they, too, professional successes with terrible character flaws? Dent doesn't say.Bryant also, at least as described in the book, had different rules and standards for different players. He waffled on his own rules right after making them. He endangered the lives of a few players, forcing them beyond exhaustion and heat stroke, while taking it easier on others. He comes across as capricious, almost crazy, more like Kim Jong Il than George Washington.The coach also comes across, at least at this stage of his career, as incompetent, handling his players poorly, playing them at positions for which they were ill-suited, altogether ignoring one great talent, possibly the best he'd ever see as a coach. I'm not a Bryant scholar, haven't read any of the biographies, and maybe some of those books would tell me more, but there's little in The Junction Boys to suggest that he was even half the coach he's reputed to have been. He seems to have been a great recruiter, albeit a crooked one. Maybe he won simply because he was able to load his teams with (often ill-gotten) talent. Of course he never coached in the NFL where recruiting is largely taken out of the equation and a coach has to be a master of the x's and o's. Dent never even tries to tell us what made Bryant's teams win.The other obvious thing Dent misses is: what about the seventy five or so players who quit the Junction training camp? Not one of those guys is interviewed, only the ones who stayed and loved Bryant and would be interested in furthering his legend.Bryant's legacy in terms of his influence on other coaches is another area left unexplored. His belief that 'toughness' was more important than speed or skill or execution or anything else was prevalent, even dominant for a long time, not so much at the collegiate or professional levels but definitely in high school football. I don't live in the South anymore and I'm not close to the high school football scene anywhere but I still read, every year or so, about a player being 'conditioned' to death during two-a-days. I know Bryant didn't start this sort of practice and he was never the only one doing it but he was the most prominent. How much of it still goes on and how much of that is still attributable to Bryant's influence is not entirely determinable but it would have been nice if Dent had looked at the issue.Again, though, this is a compelling story, one that's fascinated Texas and, really, the entire South, for a long time. I read this book quickly, even with all its flaws. I just wish a better writer would have written it, some modern-day Melville maybe. It's pretty easy to see Bryant as Captain Ahab, standing out on the dusty practice field at Junction, Texas, getting crazier and crazier, driving his crew to ruin. Robert Penn Warren, who fashioned Huey Long into Willie Stark in All the King's Men, might also have been up to the task, having seen the way the tawdry and the grandiose co-exist, the way a great man can fall. But Dent's a newspaperman, not a poet, and his small talent fails this big story.

Bear Bryant was apparently one of the greatest college football coaches ever. The way Dent describes him in this book as an unsympathetic bully who lagged all advances in football technique, that is a miracle. This book focuses on a several week period of his first year as coach of Texas A&M when he took his players to a godforsaken place for fall practice and essentially broke their will with privation, starting with 101 players and ending with 28 survivors. They won one game during the ensuing season. He had opportunities to win games if he had used the new-fangled technique called the forward pass. He refused. One comes away thinking the guy was the quintessence of everything bad in college sports.

If you've played, are playing or are a fan of the game of American Football...this is a must HAVE not just a must read. I grew up watching Alabama football under Bear, and stuck with them through everything. When Gene Stallings took over, the old timers talked about "the Junction boys" and I never knew what they were talking about.Now I do.This is the story of a group of players...becoming a team, and along the way, becoming all the man they could be. The self-discipline learned under the hand of "The Bear", a man who himself played a winning game against Tennessee WITH A BROKEN LEG, would serve the men that earned the title "Junction boy", very well in life.To quote a man who is almost a diety in college football circles..."You never know how a horse is going to pull until you hook him to a heavy load." - Coach Paul William "Bear" Bryant

Inspiring book on how the human spirit can make winners out of anyone who’s willing to make the sacrifice. Determination to succeed is what makes all the difference.

This book makes you feel like you were there. This book is brutal. I knew Bear Bryant was a tough guy and expected much the same from his team but this book gives you an almost daily account of how Bear treated his players. This was like Navy SEAL training for football players.

Dent's book about Bryant, his torture experiece, and some other things is an OK sports book, but just OK. It is real thin, and as many such books do, contains a lot of supposedly verbatim convesations that the author could have not possibly known to be true. What I am a total loss to understand is how anyone could write or read this book and think Bryant was some sort of hero. He is a total loser. He is lucky he didn't kill some of his players, and even he admits some of his actions to run players off was wrong. Other sources on Bryant point out that he left a lot to be desired in the character category, something which the author didn't even address. Bryant took over a hundred athletes to Junction and came home with a couple of dozen. The author made no attempt whatsoever to interview any of the players that left the camp, reinforcing the absurd idea that a player who would rather live with all his body parts intact than pay homage to a sadist football coach did not deserve any credit. What's wrong with this book is not unlike what is wrong with much of college football still today. Win at all costs, even if it mean life threatening injuries. And, then they made a movie out of it ????????????????

I ordered this book for hubby for Father's Day and he loves it.

From time to time in this book, scattered among the football stories, are brilliant brief nuggets of information about the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets during what many consider its prime decade, the 1950s. Those items, ranging in scope from a passing phrases to extended vignettes, are explosions of literary gold -- inescapable reminders of the real heart and soul and spirit of Texas A&M, it's unique and superlative Corps of Cadets. The football stuff is interesting but, considering the number of times the football team has failed to deliver, the vintage information about Old Army, the Corps, is what makes this a truly valuable volume.