In a State of Frenzy : Alabama: In the battle for supremacy, Coach Gene Stallings of the Crimson Tide must contend with the glory of the Bear Bryant era.

Seven years after his death, the legend of Paul (Bear) Bryant still comes equipped with a houndstooth halo.

Memories usually fade, but here in Alabama, where college football is the center of all things, Bryant’s aura never dims. People won’t let it.

At last count, the University of Alabama had named four buildings and one street in his honor. Visit any local mall and you’ll discover an entire cottage industry based on this state’s obsession with preserving Bryant’s glittering 25-year career. Bryant postcards sell for a quarter, Bryant wall clocks go for $19.95, “limited edition” plaques are priced at $130 and lithographs of him grandly surveying a Crimson Tide practice start at $1,750.

This is what happens when the present can’t compete with the past. Bryant won 232 games, a handful of national championships and 13 Southeastern Conference titles at Alabama. His successors--Ray Perkins and Bill Curry--could could manage only a single SEC championship (a three-way tie, at that) in their combined seven years.

Perkins left for the NFL after the 1986 season. Curry, never fully comfortable as the Tide’s coach, fled to Kentucky after last season. In some strange, subtle way, they failed the fickle Alabama fans. They won games, lots of them--Perkins was 32-15, Curry was 26-10--but they never seemed to provide what Alabama faithful craved most--the reincarnation of the Bear.

So Alabama has settled for the next best thing, a reluctant facsimile of Bryant, a gentle but stern man named Gene Stallings.

Stallings, 55, possesses the charm former Alabama receiver Perkins lacked and the sweet bond with Bryant that would have saved former Georgia Tech player Curry from much second-guessing. But for all his apparent advantages, Stallings said he will be true to himself, not to a legend.

“I’m not Coach Bryant, and I don’t try to be,” he said. “I know I can’t coach his style.”

Asked recently to describe the main differences between himself and Bryant, Stallings didn’t hesitate.

“Well, you can start with our records,” he said. “In no way are those similar.”

Bryant won 323 games during his coaching career at four schools. Stallings has won 50 and lost 79.

Stallings understands, perhaps better than anyone who has followed Bryant, how the Bear and Alabama’s football history are inseparable. The trick is to embrace it, not ignore it.

“I think it’s important,” he said. “We sort of want to hold onto something. In my opinion, (Bryant) was the absolute best.

“I love the man. I wish I could still consult with him.”

Bryant and Stallings met in 1954. Bryant was the new Texas A&M; coach, hell-bent on creating a winner; Stallings was a defensive end from Paris, Tex., trying to earn a starting job. Both eventually got what they wanted.

That was the year Bryant took his team to Junction City, Tex., for the most grueling, notorious training camp in A&M; history. Stallings survived the 10-day ordeal and is fond of noting that the team arrived in Junction City in two buses, but came back in one.

Bryant hired him as an assistant coach in 1957, brought him to Alabama in 1958 and kept him there until 1965, when Stallings became A&M;’s coach.

In 1972, after a 27-45-1 record at A&M;, Stallings was offered a job by Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys. Fourteen years later, he became head coach of Bill Bidwill’s Cardinals. Bidwill fired the popular Stallings last season, although there are those who insist that the owner should have written a pink slip for himself, too.

From Landry, Stallings learned precision and preparation. From Bryant, he learned the value of leadership, of mental and physical adaptability.

This was some apprenticeship. But like it or not, Stallings reminds fans of Bryant. The gravelly voices are similar. The manner also suggests Bryant.

“He worked for Bear Bryant, played for Bear Bryant and he is a lot like Bear Bryant,” Landry said not long ago.

Stallings was Bryant’s favorite, pure and simple. There is a photograph of mentor and pupil seconds after Texas A&M; had beaten Alabama in the 1968 Cotton Bowl in Dallas, 20-16. Bryant, his back to the camera, his houndstooth hat pushed forward, surprises the young Stallings with a congratulatory hug and a half-hearted effort to hoist him in the air. It is an awkward, special moment, one that reveals much about their relationship.

Years later, Bryant discreetly voiced his preference for a successor to the Alabama administration. He recommended Stallings.

“We visited,” Stallings said. “We did talk about it, there’s no question about that.”

But even the Bear’s wishes had their limitations. Alabama chose Perkins, and when that marriage soured, it chose an outsider, Curry.

Curry won 72% of his games at Alabama, but his methods and sincerity were questioned. He had supporters, to be sure. But he also had many detractors, one of them willing to throw a brick through his office window one night.

He won games, but he couldn’t beat hated Auburn. He went to bowls, but lost two of three. He lost to Mississippi one year, for goodness sakes, although the Tide won by 45 points the nextseason.

Curry wasn’t this. He wasn’t that.

In short, he wasn’t the Bear. Not even close.

So he resigned, leaving mighty Alabama for lowly Kentucky, which has won more than six games in a season only twice since 1955.

“All I could think of was, ‘There’s another coach gone,’ ” Alabama center Roger Schultz said. “After that, I don’t remember a thing (Curry) said.”

Schultz wears an SEC championship ring, the result of last year’s three-way tie with Tennessee and Auburn. He has the memories of that 10-2 season, which included a 33-25 Sugar Bowl loss to eventual national champion Miami, the most points scored on the Hurricanes all season.

“So (Curry) must have been a pretty good coach,” Schultz said. “But I think he made the right decision. You got to take into account that he seems a lot happier where he is.”

Stallings offered his own account: “I don’t think Alabama forced him out. The reason Bill Curry left is because he wanted to.”

In the end, said those familiar with Alabama football, Curry might have been done in by his own insecurity, to say nothing of a Tide athletic administration that was too slow to soothe his fears. Perhaps it worked out for the better.

“I didn’t want to see Coach Curry leave,” Schultz said. “But every time you pick up the paper, you’re not needing to read about how bad they hate your coach.”

Nobody hates Stallings. He can do little wrong.

A sub-par recruiting year? Alabama followers blame Curry for his poor timing.

T-shirts that ridicule Alabama’s 0-4 record against Auburn in as many years? It’s Perkins’ and Curry’s fault.

A third-place finish in the SEC preseason media poll? Curry left us bare.

This is the grace period, that tiny window of opportunity where coaches, Stallings especially, are allowed to stumble. So far, he has made the best of it.

But it’s early, a fact not lost on Stallings.

“I’ve always loved Alabama fans,” he said. “Alabama fans are for somebody. They might not always be for you, but they’re for somebody.”

At the moment, they are for him. But some Alabama followers can’t help themselves. Already, Stallings has been informed by several anxious alumni that Auburn must be defeated . . . or else. And while you’re at it, make sure Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Penn State and LSU are beaten, too.

“Do I feel any pressure? Yeah, I do,” Stallings said. “When 75,000 folks buy a ticket, there’s pressure. But there’s no pressure in practice, because practices are free.”

Stallings wanted this job, lobbied for it. He said his only reservation about Alabama was “that they might not offer it to me.”

It’s his now, all of it--the adulation, the perks, the expectations, the comparisons to Bryant. Stallings hasn’t coached college football for almost 20 years. Freshmen weren’t eligible the last time he stood on a college sideline. A 250-pound lineman was considered mammoth. The college game wasn’t as sophisticated.

Suddenly that 10-2 season of Curry’s doesn’t seem so bad after all.

“Whether (the fans) were happy or not, 10-2 would please me,” Stallings said. “I’m not big on slogans, but I’ve got one in my office. It says, ‘Never confuse activity with accomplishments.’ Results are what counts.”

So far, Stallings hasn’t accomplished much except mend some fences. Recruiting was a mess, mostly because Stallings had only about a month to visit players. Worse yet, he hadn’t had a chance to hire a staff. Recruits would visit the campus, be greeted by Stallings and then shuttled back to Tide assistant Jim Fuller, the lone holdover from Curry’s staff. Fuller would then send a player back to Stallings.

Impressive, it wasn’t.

“Coach,” Fuller said one day, “I’ve never been in the NFL, but I don’t think this is gonna do it.”

It didn’t. Stallings eventually hired his assistants, but they couldn’t entirely compensate for the time lost. Alabama signed some very good players, but how many did they lose in the transition?

Still, the team isn’t without talent. Ten offensive starters return, including All-SEC quarterback Gary Hollingsworth, all-conference running back Siran Stacy, all-conference tight end Lamonde Russell and Schultz, another all-conference pick. The defense is less predictable; the Tide lost All-American Keith McCants, nose guard Willie Wyatt and cornerback John Mangum.

“I’m concerned about certain aspects of our football team,” Stallings said.

Stallings will survive. He did it in 1954 at Junction City. He did it last year when the Cardinals showed him the trap door. He will do it again when Alabama fans accuse him, as they inevitably will, of not doing as the Bear would have.

By this, Stallings probably will be pleased. He is his own man, not a caricature of Bryant.

“It feels funny to be a rookie at my age,” Stallings said.

Rookie, yes. A Bryant imitator, no.

GENE STALLINGS

YEAR SCHOOL/TEAM W L T 1965 Texas A&M; 3 7 0 1966 Texas A&M; 4 5 1 1967 Texas A&M;* 7 4 0 1968 Texas A&M; 3 7 0 1969 Texas A&M; 3 7 0 1970 Texas A&M; 2 9 0 1971 Texas A&M; 5 6 0 1986 St. Louis (NFL) 4 11 1 1987 St. Louis (NFL) 7 8 0 1988 Phoenix (NFL) 7 9 0 1989 Phoenix (NFL) 5 6 0

College Record: 27-45-1

NFL Record: 23-34-1

*Earned bowl bid