Hi, it's a Sunday afternoon in early December 1941.

Paul Bryant, the coach that they call The Bear,

is in Little Rock, Arkansas for a meeting.

He's there with the governor of Arkansas, Homer Adkins, and New York Yankees catcher

and future baseball hall-famer Bill Dickie.

It's Dickie who has made this introduction between Bryant, who's a native of Morrow Bottom, Arkansas, and Atkins, who now runs Bryant's home state.

Bryant is, for the moment, an assistant football coach at Vanderbilt, and Atkins is here to talk with him about taking over the head coaching job at the

University of Arkansas, where the current coach Fred Thompson has had four losing seasons in a row.

Make no mistake that Bear Bryant wants this job and he puts on that

good old Arkansas charm in his meeting with Adkins. When Bryant walks out of the

meeting that day he feels confident that this job will be his.

And that night, Bryant is in the car and he's driving back to Nashville.

And he hears a news bulletin on the radio.

NBC Newsroom in New York.

President Roosevelt said in a statement today

that the Japanese have attacked the Pearl Harbor

Hawaii from the air.

I'll repeat that, President Roosevelt says

that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air.

This bulletin came to you from the NBC newsroom in New York.

Riot will tell slightly different versions of this story in the years to come. In one, it seems

like he's alone, in another Dickie is driving and Bryant is the passenger, but the

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