I have also read THE JUNCTION BOYS by Jim Dent, and I understand how some reviewers prefer it over Stoddard's book, but I also understand the comment by another reviewer that Dent's book is highly imaginative and cannot be regarded as historical. Dent's ability as a writer is superior to Stoddard's, but Stoddard's historical reliability is much superior to Dent's in THE JUNCTION BOYS.
Stoddard has done what Dent should have done, and that is to carefully interview those who were involved. Someone had to do this job of interviewing to write a book like these two books, each of them covering a time in Bryant's career when he played the role of a boot camp commandant. Now that we have both books, one is more historical, the other more dramatic.
I actually expected a more dramatic book from Stoddard, but I appreciate his meticulous attention to detail. He has not bitten off more than he could chew, whereas Dent's book is so panoramic and stretched out, those who made the TV movie from it actually picked out a rather tiny aspect of it to put on the TV screen. If Stoddard's book was made into such a movie, the movie presentation would probably cover just about all that Stoddard has written in TURNAROUND.
I think that Stoddard and Dent both have pretty well stated accurately how actually brutal both Bryant boot camps were -- the one at Junction and the one at Tuscaloosa. I say this because Benny Marshall in his book WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING quotes some of Bryant's players as saying that they doubted that Bryant's practices were worse than those of any other SEC team. The difference probably was that the practices described in THE JUNCTION BOYS and TURNAROUND occurred in each case at the very beginning of a Bryant program, when Bryant's obvious intention was to turn the culture around, from that of a loser to a winner.
George Blanda in his book on Bear Bryant probably describes much the same thing as happening at Kentucky when Bryant first arrived there. I have read that book, and my impression from it is that Bryant at that point was dealing with many players who had served in World War II. Those "practices," it seems to me, resembled a modern NFL combine or a camp run by Nick Saban, when players are called in for a looksee. In Bryant's case at Kentucky, he evidently put them through much the same thing that he later did at A&M, as somewhat loosely described by Dent, and at Alabama, as described more faithfully by Stoddard. In all three cases, it seems clear that Bryant's intent was to weed out the "quitters."
Report an issue with this product or seller
