Sport: Coach Alex Steps Down

This week, on doctor’s orders, the grand old man of Southern football quits as coach of Georgia Tech. Football coaches everywhere accepted Bill Alexander as a blackboard wizard. Season after season, he thought up new ways to baffle old opponents, put new twists on old tricks. No man to keep his opinions to himself, he argued doggedly against the huddle (because it slowed the game), once brushed off a proposal for fancy new uniforms with a terse: “You look mighty silly when you lose in a trick getup.”

Necessity was the mother of his gridiron inventiveness. Because Tech’s academic standards were high, his squads correspondingly small, onetime Mathematics Professor William Anderson Alexander devised an intricate type of play that few but his apt engineers could have mastered. Ruddy-faced Coach Alex carried his chalk and blackboard to the half-time dressing rooms, substituted diagraming for tear-jerking pep talks. He said rousing up the boys produced mental instability.

During his quarter-century reign, the rambling wrecks of Georgia Tech won 135 games, lost 95, tied eight, played in five Bowl games, and piled up enough anecdotes to liven the Alex legend for years to come. Sample stories:

¶ A star player got a front tooth kicked out in the last quarter of a tight game. The nerve was exposed and quivering, but the player begged Alex to keep him in the game. Alex finally gave in, took a wad of chewing gum from his own mouth and plastered the jumping nerve. The player finished the game, with third-stringers furiously chewing gum on the sidelines, at Alex’s order, to keep the star supplied with packing.

¶ One season, when Tech had a particularly strong eleven, the schedule included a game with Clemson, a weak sister that year. The Atlanta gamblers spotted Clemson 35 points. Alex heard about it, played the entire game with his B team, and eked out a 7-to-0 victory. The gamblers lost their shirts, but none of their respect for Coach Alex.