Although I was just an elementary school student and then teenager throughout Bill Battle’s stint as head football coach of the Tennessee Volunteers from 1970-76, I surprisingly managed to cross paths with him a few times. And I am not just talking about watching him from the stands.
I saw him up close at a youth football clinic two summers in a row, then when he was recruiting someone at my school, and even at a golf tournament in which I was participating. And in recent years I had a chance to interview him over the phone.
He always seemed like a gentlemanly and decent man, although certainly not one who would turn a head when he walked into a room like maybe a Nick Saban or Bear Bryant of Alabama. And that might have been why he was not as successful at least as a football coach, although his admirable personal skills later helped him in the business world.
All of this came back to mind after hearing of his death on Thanksgiving Day at the age of 82. For me, it was like losing a part of my childhood, as I remember how he went from seeming capable to Vol fans the first few seasons replacing Doug Dickey while only in his late 20s to seeing his team struggle to 7-5 in 1975 and 6-5 in 1976.
It was a contrast to my life as I matured and became more confident from a fourth grader to a junior in high school.
While I never lived or died with the Vols during that time as a general college football fan and eventually cemented my allegiance to my father’s alma mater of the University of Georgia, I certainly pulled for the Vols under him a few times.
And maybe I identified more with his gentlemanly manner than I did with Johnny Majors, who came in with a seemingly more hard-nosed staff after a 1976 national championship at Pittsburgh and slowly turned the Vol program around again after a few more lean seasons.
Although I think I might have seen him or heard him speak once or twice while attending the UT All-Sports Camp in the summers of 1972 and ’73, I saw Coach Battle more closely when he and his staff conducted the two-day Bill Battle Football Clinics at Baylor School those same summers.
I remember that when we would have a break in the different drills and sessions around the old Rike Field, I saw several high school recruits or signees show up, and an assistant like Lon Herzbrun would whisper into coach Battle’s ear the name of someone who was walking up to them. I guess it was harder for coach Battle to remember everyone’s name, and that assistant might have recruited more in the Chattanooga area.
But coach Battle seemed at home talking to 200-300 of us in the old wrestling room on the back side of the Baylor athletic facility at the end of the second day as we eager young football players sipped on ice cold chocolate milk.
And I felt honored during one of those years that I was able to make an almost-lucky diving catch of a ball during a pass-receiving drill while coach Battle was standing nearby trying to observe all the different activities among multiple groups. I was also quite flattered that he complimented me on the catch.
The next time I observed him up close was probably around the late winter or spring of 1975, when I was sitting in Baylor football coach E.B. “Red” Etter’s Latin 1 class as a ninth grader. Suddenly we had a visitor at the door as the class had not gotten very far along – and it was coach Battle, who was just looking at coach Etter and did not really acknowledge us students.
He was there to talk to coach Etter and probably visit with rising senior fullback Jeff Aiken. So, coach Etter, almost acting like he was surprised to see him, or at least at that specific time, quickly dismissed us to the library so he could talk to whom was then the most famous football face in the state of Tennessee.
Then, in the summer of 1976, I was able to qualify for a state Insurance Youth Classic golf tournament in Clarksville, and somehow coach Battle was making an appearance there. I think the schedule of activities had gotten thrown off, so instead of making any formal talk or congratulations, he was just putting some on the putting green by the clubhouse while I was there.
I guess I should have introduced myself and told him he had once complimented me at the Bill Battle Football Clinic, but I guess I was too bashful at that time, so I did not. But I was more open in my observations and noticed that no one was walking up to him and wanting an autograph or even desiring to speak to him, and maybe that was an alarm about his likely future.
They say college coaches of a high-profile sport are in trouble when no one speaks to them or acknowledges them in a public setting, and maybe that was a warning to coach Battle, as he would be gone by the end of that year. He was a nice and admirable man, but maybe he just did not have enough of that tough guy image sometimes required in football.
Or maybe it was his young age. After all, Lane Kiffin is undoubtedly a better coach now than when he was at Tennessee and Southern Cal when he was about coach Battle’s age and before getting away from head coaching for a period.
As a sporadic Vol fan as mentioned, I had cheered hard in person for coach Battle and UT in such games as the win over Florida in 1970 when coach Dickey returned to play his former team, in the 1974 Liberty Bowl, in the 1975 Auburn win in Knoxville, and in the 1974 and ’76 games against Vanderbilt in Nashville.
I have never forgotten hearing an emergency siren or two around the Liberty Bowl stadium in Memphis as we were leaving after the exciting come-from-behind win over Maryland, and my father, Dr. C. Wayne Shearer, told me the next morning the shocking news. Coach Battle’s 66-year-old father, who was the athletic director at Birmingham-Southern, had died after suffering a heart attack in the stands.
With the help of his former Alabama mentor, coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, coach Battle got into collegiate licensing. That was certainly admirable of his old coach to help him, and coach Battle was able to make millions of dollars. He had also, I think, been involved initially with a Selma, Al., company that maybe morphed into his later work.
He would be spotted at Alabama games within a year or two after that, and I remember hearing from a University of Georgia friend, Dave Williams, that coach Battle had complimented in person after a game Alabama freshman Jim Bob Harris. Mr. Harris had played at Clarke Central High with Mr. Williams.
Coach Battle’s connection to rival Alabama was also a little bothersome to Tennessee fans, but seemingly only after the struggling seasons began about 1973 or ’74, or after a late collapse against the Crimson Tide in 1972. Coincidentally, before his death, I had just been working on a story about the season of 1974 of 50 years ago and was also including a profile on Stanley Morgan. I hope to post it in Chattanoogan.com in the near future after initially writing a similar compilation of stories for the Shopper News/News Sentinel in Knoxville.
I also once got a chance to interview Mr. Battle a few years ago for a story looking back at those 1970s seasons, and he was really kind and shared with me that they simply did not win enough games after hoping he could right the ship as late as before his final season. He was very polite, and I felt a little bad when I asked him the question about the story of a moving van being sent to his home in the Fox Den subdivision of Farragut, a home I once tracked down through an old Knoxville city directory and drove by out of curiosity. The move had been done as a hoax by a fan disgruntled with coach Battle.
Although I am more of just a feature writer but felt it was an honest question to ask, he became kind of quiet and stuttered for a few seconds and said something like, “No one wants to hear about that.”
It was one of those situations where I wondered later if I should have asked it. But he was cordial during the rest of the roughly 20-minute interview, and kindly told me as we ended the conversation to let him know if I needed anything else or any other help in the future.
By this time, he had become a successful businessman, although I think he had sold it to IMG by then. But he must have still been busy, as I did have to set up the appointment with a secretary beforehand. The fact that he wanted to be interviewed about a not-so-great period in his life was certainly admirable.
After our conversation, he would go on to serve as athletic director at Alabama from 2013 to 2017. And yes, Alabama under legendary Nick Saban would defeat Tennessee in football every year during that stretch.
His life was still not perfect even after leaving Tennessee, though, as I understand he was divorced from his first wife and had battled multiple myeloma cancer in his later years.
However, he still managed to have quite a noble second act and third act after Tennessee. Maybe like Jimmy Carter as president and later, he redeemed himself quite nicely for decades after being let go as football coach at Tennessee while only in his mid-30s.
But in character, coach Battle seemed to be near the top all along.
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Jcshearer2@comcast.net