Maroon Paint

Stepping off                                                                                                            In the winter of 1954 Paul “Bear” Bryant left the University of Kentucky where he had been the successful head football coach for eight years to resurrect Texas A&M. Paul Bryant brought with him ideas and coaching  methods that were strange to some and unique to others. He had perfected most of what he brought from Kentucky. Bryant’s techniques were to have a lasting impact and leave a mark on Gene Stallings and a lot of coaches and players, as well as the game of football itself for many years after Bryant left Texas A&M, and for that matter, after his demise. Many of these coaches and players would be Bryanted forever.                                                                                                                               Bryant left Texas A&M for his alma mater in December of 1957. On his return to Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama as head football coach, he took a young coach with him named Gene Stallings who had recently played for him at Texas A&M. Seven years later, Gene Stallings returned to Texas A&M to revive their broken football fortunes, as head coach. Much has been said and written about what Bryant did to his Texas A&M team in the fall of 1954 at a place called Junction, where he had a heat stroke subjected purge of his first Texas A&M team.                                                                                                                         Stallings instituted a second “Junction” in the spring of 1965 that very well could have been more intense, severe, and harder to endure than the Junction of 1954 that he and several of his Bryanted coaches had endured as players.                                                                                                             This book tells the story of the culture of Texas A&M in late1964 and the football program that Gene Stallings started in December of 1964 when he was hired and ending in January of 1968 with the Cotton Bowl victory over Bear Bryant and his Alabama Crimson Tide. There is a special emphasis on the spring of 1965 and several seniors, as well as the rest of the team that endured. Much mention is also made of those that did not endure and what the purge they all were subjected to meant to them. The back story reveals the struggle they all endured along with the repercussions for them as human beings, their coaches, Texas A&M, and the football program as a whole.                                                                                                                                      The story of Gene Stallings and his entry on the scene at Texas A&M with the group of seniors that survived and what he did to them and for them, as well as other players in the classes behind them, is a remarkable human interest story, when coupled with what Paul Bryant had done and did for Gene Stallings as his coach, mentor, and confidant. The great thing about the seniors is that they only had one year left to participate, except for the injured,who had an extra year. These players could have walked off from the hell they had to endure as some did, yet they stayed and faced this drastic endeavor created by Gene Stallings.                                                                                         The Bryant brand that touched so many people and affected the culture