Football 1937

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1937
Head Coach: Johnny Cain
4-3-1

1937 TEAM alphabetical
Glynn Abel, Vernon Bell, Ashton Bourgeois, Robert DeRouen Sidney Ducharme Jr., Jerry Young Duncan, Thomas Rupert Gagnet, William Garth, Sam Gunter, Joe Herpin, Otis C. Hurst, Knox Little, Joseph Rodgers, Jim Vic Russell, Jams Sanford, Bill Stevenson, Allen Douglas Tillman, Ralph Weber, Verne White, Harlan Willey, Henry Williams

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Paul (Bear) Bryant became a legend as a coach at Alabama, but that was after he was turned down for the coaching job at UL (then SLI). The year was 1937. T.F. Wilbanks, then the SLI football coach, had just gone 2-7-1. The alumni wanted a new coach and SLI athletic director Bob Brown was willing to oblige them. The choice boiled down to two men: Johnny L. Cain or a young Bryant, who was then looking for his first collegiate coaching job. The late J.C. (Dutch) Reinhardt reminisced about the Bear in an interview with Advertiser Sports Editor Bruce Brown in 1982, just after Bryant’s death. “I still remember sitting around a wooden table with Bob Brown and Bear,” Reinhardt recalled in 1982. “I wasn’t in on the interviews. We were just having coffee. Bear was just a country boy, a whole-hearted person, and high-falutin’ ways didn’t bother him at all. “The following week, Johnny Cain came in. He was from Alabama, too. He was a halfback and left-footed kicker and had been a member of their Rose Bowl team. The decision was made to go with Johnny Cain, but Bear was here.” Cain coached through the 1941 season, took a break for World War II, and returned in 1946 for one more year at the helm at SLI. He compiled a record of 33 wins, 19 losses, and 5 ties at SLI. Bryant got his first chance to coach at the collegiate level in 1945 at Maryland, compiling a 6-2-1 mark that year. He would go on to win 323 games before he was done. The source of the story Jim Bradshaw jbradshaw@theadvertiser.com