Ain't Nothin' But a Winner: Bear Bryant, The Goal Line Stand, and a Chance of a Lifetime

By Barry Krauss, Joe M. Moore and Don Shula

A rollicking memoir from the linebacker at the heart of the most famous Alabama football play of all time
 
No university has won more football championships than Alabama, and Barry Krauss played a key role in one of them. The linebacker’s fourth down stop of Penn State’s Mike Guman in the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1979, was recently named by ESPN as one of the ten most important plays of the 20th century.
 
The Goal Line Stand, as the play became known, immortalized Krauss among legions of fans. More than twenty-five years later, people still tell him exactly what they were doing and how they felt when he collided in mid-air with Guman that New Year’s Day—and almost never mention his twelve-year career in the NFL.
 
In this entertaining and well-illustrated memoir, Krauss tells of scrimmaging on front lawns with friends as a kid in Pompano Beach, Florida, and of his childhood dream to play for Don Shula. He acknowledges how Coach Bear Bryant tamed his free spirit and shaped him into the football player—and the man—he became. In addition, he emphasizes the importance of team, weaving together the personal stories of his Alabama teammates on the field during the Goal Line Stand, and acknowledges their significant roles in winning the game and the championship.
 
Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner offers an insider’s look at how a team is built, tested, and becomes a national champion—and how that process sometimes calls upon an individual to rise to the challenge presented by his own personal gut check.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780817390730

Book preview

Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner

Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner

BEAR BRYANT, THE GOAL LINE STAND, AND A CHANCE OF A LIFETIME

BARRY KRAUSS and JOE M. MOORE

With a Foreword by Don Shula

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2006

Barry Krauss and Joe M. Moore

All rights reserved.

Hardcover edition published 2006.

Paperback edition published 2016.

eBook edition published 2016.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Minion and Frutiger

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover image: Chance of a Lifetime by Barry Krauss; courtesy of the author

Cover design: David Nees

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8173-5864-8

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8173-9073-0

A previous edition of this book has been catalogued by the Library of Congress as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krauss, Barry.

  Ain’t nothin’ but a winner : Bear Bryant, the goal line stand, and a chance of a lifetime / Barry Krauss and Joe M. Moore ; with a foreword by Don Shula.

       p . cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1541-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-8173-1541-1 (alk. paper)

  1. Krauss, Barry. 2. Football players—United States—Biography. 3. Bryant, Paul W. 4. Football coaches—United States. 5. Indianapolis Colts (Football team)—Biography. 6. Baltimore Colts (Football team)—Biography. I. Moore, Joe M., 1956– II. Title.

  GV939.K735 2006

  796.332092—dc22

2006006856

CONTENTS

Foreword by Don Shula

Acknowledgments

Chance of a Lifetime—It’s All about Dreams

Pompano, Football, and Life in a Pink House

The University of Alabama, Paul Bear Bryant, and Me

Learning Life, and Football, from a Living Legend

The Usual Suspects in an Unusual Place

The Usual Shenanigans

The 1978 Season

The Goal Line Stand

Reality Check

The Vanquished

How I Single-Handedly Almost Lost the National Championship

Life after the Sugar Bowl

Welcome to the NFL

New Life in Indianapolis

It’s Easy—Just Take a Right in Cleveland and Keep Driving

My Longest Love Affair

The Journey

FOREWORD

Don Shula

Ain’t Nothin’ But a Winner: Bear Bryant, The Goal Line Stand, and a Chance of a Lifetime is about Barry Krauss’s love of football. It is about football as a way of life and how Krauss’s blessed journey through life included learning the game from one of its all-time best apostles, Paul W. Bear Bryant.

Today, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of players and former players suffer the loss of football in their lives when they stop playing—a malady called separation anxiety. This happens to players of all levels, from peewee, to high school, college, and the pros. To almost every one of them, it happens before they would have chosen.

The first time I looked into Barry’s eyes after he retired, I saw a peace there that only the purest of players can have. Barry always left every ounce of his being on the field; he held nothing back. Only this type of player can walk away from the game whole.

Barry Krauss is a whole man.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost, I would like to thank my father—my hero—for everything. He did it all, from throwing the baseball with me, to playing football, to teaching me about working on the car. He always did more than he had to, from carrying me over the hot sand at the beach, to fixing my bike, to staying up with me after one of those childhood nightmares.

Thank you to my mother. She was always at my games cheering for me, whether at Pompano, Alabama, the Colts or the Dolphins.

Is that your mother yelling? I can still remember my teammates asking. She has always been a full-throated supporter of Barry Krauss.

My mom prepared me to play in every way. She would even get up before the crack of dawn and create our own little special concoction—a growth potion that consisted of a half-gallon of milk, a half-gallon of ice cream, a dozen eggs, and chocolate flavoring. Thanks to her efforts, I went from 5′11″ and 185 pounds, to 6′3″ and 225 pounds the summer after my junior year.

Coach Bryant taught me that college was not only a place to learn something but a place to become somebody. He taught me how we can make a difference not only on the field but also in life. He prioritized life: faith, family (call your momma), and then football (Alabama).

Thank you Coach Shula for being an approachable hero, for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, and for allowing me to fulfill my dream of playing for you and the Miami Dolphins.

To Bob, my big brother, I owe a special debt of gratitude. He taught me how to play linebacker and protected me as a skinny kid with a dream. I will always welcome being known as Bob Krauss’s little brother.

To my little brother Erik, my war hero, thanks for protecting our country and our freedom. I am very proud of you.

And to my soul mate and wife, Darcy, thank you for hanging with me through the tough moments in life. Your love at the lowest moment of my life made it all worthwhile. You are a wonderful woman who never needs makeup and is always beautiful. You loved me when I wasn’t very lovable, gave me your opinions when I didn’t want them (knowing you were right), and stayed with me in my constant, never-ending transition from football.

Best of all Darcy, you listened to all of my dreams and helped make them come true.

To Ashley, my oldest daughter, who is in New Zealand at this writing, I think about you and miss you every day. Ashley was raised crimson and white and could say Roll Tide and Amabama from the time she was born.

Thank you to my sweet and caring Charlsie, my charismatic and athletic Savannah, and my kind, loving son, Karsten, my mini-me.

And to My Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for giving me purpose and passion for life. Thank you, Lord, for carrying me when I needed to be carried, teaching me the true fundamentals of life when I needed to be taught, and, most important, for trusting me to learn to let go and trust you.

Perhaps most important, thank you to my teammates who were on the field with me that day. Their input and cooperation helped make this project truly special.

And to Joe Moore, my partner, confidant, and close friend, thank you for always being there for me.

Barry Krauss

There are some dramatically special moments in everyone’s journey through life which shape their world to come. Someone really in-tune with people, fate, and the natural universe can see them coming. Many of us have to recognize them from our feelings.

When I met my wife, Carol, I got one of those life-changing feelings. More than anything, she believes in loving her family. She has taught me well.

I experienced three other dramatically special moments when I witnessed the births of Haley, Emily, and Burke—my children. They are wonderful people and a great support system. They are also powerful and inspiring forces to prove every day that there is a God and He is good. Because of them, I know I will have a tremendously positive impact on this world long after I am gone.

Thank you to my father, Joe Ray Moore, who taught me his work ethic. He also showed me how a father truly loves his children, through everything he does and says.

And thank you to Barry, who on a hot fall afternoon in 1975, jumped into a hole as I took a hand-off on a 40-trap and put me out of football. The true irony here is that, working together on this project, we have put each other back into football.

Joe M. Moore

1

Chance of a Lifetime—It’s All about Dreams

The world of sports in America is America.

For many like me, sports are all-encompassing. The love of competition is absorbed through our pores and soaked into our very being almost from birth. It courses through our veins and pours out our sweat glands. It is our being. And, to a select and lucky few, it forges us into people who can be involved in something fantastic, supernatural, and almost surreal—a great play that lives on throughout time, not just changing the outcome of a game but affecting the lives of participants and fans for years and decades to come.

There is a true irony here: the play is over in an instant, yet it lives on forever. We never lose our memory of it, and we can never walk away from its impact on our lives. And for those of us who are lucky enough to have ever been involved in one of those plays, we instantly know that we have experienced a chance of a lifetime.

These things don’t just happen as a natural occurrence in the universe.

Every chance of a lifetime starts with the dream—maybe one from early childhood—which even the dreamer is perhaps too bashful to admit. Then it turns into hard work, more dreaming, building a future, working even harder, and finally—if everything goes perfectly—the realization of that one chance to fulfill the dream.

My dream as a third grader growing up in Pompano Beach, Florida, was to play for Don Shula and the Miami Dolphins. You know, the Big Guy Upstairs has a great sense of humor when giving us dreams. Sometimes our dreams are realized, sometimes not, but most of the time just striving to fulfill those dreams makes us better people. Great sense of humor, and He knows what He’s doing. More about that dream and one of its true believers, my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Sayer, later.

Anyway, success is always elusive. On every athletic field and court, whenever there is a chance of a lifetime, the outcome can fall either way. Each team has to reach out and grab it, squeeze it—hold it like the children we love so much today—for at that time in our life this chance of a lifetime is our life.

It would be pretentious to believe that my chance was any different, any more special, or had any more impact than anyone else’s chance. They are all dramatic. They are all life-changing significant emotional events.

It just so happens that my chance of a lifetime came about in football. Probably more important, it came about in the 1978 NCAA National Championship football game, Alabama vs. Penn State, in a Sugar Bowl game that was televised nationally on the afternoon of January 1, 1979. The whole world was watching.

Maybe equally important, I was on a team formed and forged by Paul W. Bear Bryant at the instant he won the fifth of his six national championships. He would win another the following year.

In true Bear Bryant form, he praised everyone but himself.

As for me, he said, and I’m sincere, I contribute so little that I take a lot of pride in being a part of something like this.

What a coach! What a man!

Coach Bryant knew the secret. In sports the chance of a lifetime seldom comes to those who are just talented, just well-coached, or just lucky. It comes—quite honestly—to those who are all of the above. And it only comes to a minuscule few of those.

When it does come—when you get that one chance of a lifetime to make your greatest of dreams come true—it changes everything.

And in the white-hot spotlight of sports in this nation—the impact is colossal.

It is this full understanding of how special, how rare, and how universally unique it is to capitalize on a chance of a lifetime, that my collaborator, Joe Moore, and I have created the Chance of a Lifetime book series, which tells the stories of athletes all over the world who realize their dreams, each through their own chance of a lifetime.

This book will exhibit how my life evolved from that of a kid without much self-confidence to a young man molded and so inspired by Coach Bryant that I, we—the entire team—refused to give up. We will follow our team’s ride, and my small part in it, to that historic moment in New Orleans.

This book also chronicles how my chance of a lifetime opened new doors for me personally and professionally in the NFL. It follows my career, my life, through its ups and downs toward today.

Perhaps most important, this book shows how the hard work, dedication, and focus of one man, Paul W. Bryant, shaped the lives of football players, men, students, fans, and the people of the state of Alabama for more than two generations.

2

Pompano, Football, and Life in a Pink House

Life in Pompano Beach, Florida, would seem to be somewhat idyllic. Beautiful views, the beach, peaceful . . . quiet.

Hardly. Not with Barry Krauss around.

Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t just me. It was my entire group. Well, possibly it was me to a greater extent than my friends.

I can still remember approaching any number of friends’ houses and seeing their mothers hurry to close their drapes when they saw me coming. I didn’t take it personally. I just assumed that their front yard was closed for the day.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that any lawn in Pompano was our potential football field. That could have been one of the problems. Most of the time it was the front yards—where there was really nice grass. When we were through with one lawn, it would have a completely worn-out middle, just like a real grass football field. Like a swarm of locusts, we would move on to another perfect lawn. And by the way, we used everything in the yard. Those exquisitely manicured shrubs, a perfect goal line. We dove over them to score. Over the top. Yea! Touchdown at any cost. And sprinkler heads, the ideal end-zone pylons—especially if they were up and sprinkling.

And