How Coach Bear Bryant Saved and Changed My Life

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. Jeremiah Castile played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide and was on the last team coached by the legendary Bear Bryant. Castillo was a pallbearer at Bryant’s funeral on January 28, 1983. Let’s take a listen to his story.

00:00:30
Speaker 2: I was born in 1961, Columbus, Georgia. My father was a World War II vet, number eight of nine children. They had about a fourth-grade education. I was born in the project’s government housing there at Elizabeth Kenny Apartments. Then we moved to Phoenix City, Alabama. I was probably three years old, so around 1964 we moved, and none of my siblings graduated from high school. The drugs, the alcohol, the… what I saw at home. Domestic violence was in my house. My mom and dad fought, so at school, that’s how I solved my problems with any of my classmakers was: “I’m not talking; we’re just gonna get right at it.” And in my middle school, during my seventh grade year, I got in a fight again. I had already been suspended from school for fighting, and I had to take the note home to my mom for my parents to sign. And it was a day my mother was sober, so she signed it. And she was handing it back to me, she said, “Boy, I’m so disappointed in you.”

00:01:42
Speaker 3: The Lord used that to grip my heart.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: As a thirteen-year-old, it just gripped my heart. I took her back to school, finished the year out, and really realized I needed to change.

00:02:01
Speaker 3: The little church.

00:02:02
Speaker 2: It was Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, little church down the street. They would do revival every summer. So I have no interest in you going to church. Any of that hadn’t, you know, before that. But God drew me, based on I realized I needed to change, and I went. And so, when you came in, the mothers and fathers of that church asked, “Were you saved?” And I really didn’t know what that meant. They said, “You must not be. Go sit on the front row.” So they escorted me to the front row, and they called that the mourner’s bench. And the mothers and fathers of that church, the eldest, they just prayed for those people that was on that front row. And I would say, about the third day of that revival, the Lord saved me. And what it was, as I heard the Gospel – the good news that God loved me and He demonstrated that love through Jesus Christ on the Cross. The first time of my life, it was communicated to Jeremiah that he was loved.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: I would say.

00:03:02
Speaker 2: My parents showed me that by providing a place to live, food, pretty much those basic things, but never communicated verbally that I was loved. And all the way up to that time, my mom would get intoxicated and just get violent. So, one day – I probably was ten – my mom had a knife in her hand, kitchen knife, and I wanted to go play basketball. She was intoxicated. We got an army in it. Anyway, I ended up with a two-inch scar on my right arm and had to be taken to the hospital, stitches to put in my arm. So I was dealing with a lot of rejection. So that third day I heard the Gospel, and for the first time, “Hey, somebody loved Jeremiah!” I tell people, I walked in that church of Center, walked out of Saint. That was a radical moment in my life. There wasn’t a lightning and flash. There was a powerful transformation in my heart, in my inner mand. And the reason I can say that is because the first person God gave me a love for was my mother. Now, when God saved me, He gave me a vision for my life that in the Castile house things could be different and that He could use me. And so God gave me a vision to play football. Football really came to be what I wanted to do in the University of Alabama, probably my eighth-grade year. And so, through athletics, I could get a scholarship, go to school, get an education, get a job, make enough money to be able to help my mother get sober, and change the living conditions of my parents.

00:04:48
Speaker 3: And that vision disciplined me.

00:04:51
Speaker 2: I grew up in a home where drugs and alcohol were sold, but I’ve never smoked a marijuana cigarette; I’ve never drank a beer. I’ve never been in toxic care. That’s the power of a dream. And the dream mattered more than recreational fund that I could have with teenagers. And so, when the Lord save me, I just became focused on that, and I became an Alabama fan. Also started watching The Coach Bryant Show, and the vision: “I’m going to Alabama. I’m gonna go play football at Alabama.” I was five-nine, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. It weren’t a bunch of people knocking on the door. I had a breakout year my senior year. I played both ways: a plate running back, slot, receiver, and corner, and our team actually made it to the playoffs. We got beat, but it gave schools a chance to look at me. And I was just small, but I was very athletic. I could run and jump and was strong. So I can remember where I got my first letter from the University of Alabama.

00:05:58
Speaker 3: My coach Wayne Trevor High School.

00:05:59
Speaker 2: He came in one morning in the cafeteria, and he dropped a letter on the table. And it had “University of Alabama.”

00:06:06
Speaker 3: And I opened it up.

00:06:09
Speaker 2: And it said that I was being recruited. And, man, I start yelling, screaming. I ran out the doors to the school yard, yelling, “I told you all! You know, because I would tell…”

00:06:23
Speaker 3: People I was going to Alabama.

00:06:25
Speaker 2: So I came over in the fall of 1978, met Coach Bryant.

00:06:30
Speaker 3: Coach Jeff Rowsey.

00:06:32
Speaker 2: Was the coach that recruited me, and he and I would talk thirty years or later. And so he told me. He says, “You know, when you first met Coach Bryant, and he looked at you, and you’d walked off…” He said, “Jeff, you sure about him? He’s mighty little.” And Coach Rowsey said, “Trust me, Coach, he can play.”

00:06:54
Speaker 3: Well.

00:06:55
Speaker 2: I’m a freshman in 1979, and that team is the returning national champions. And that team is loaded; has got a lot of guys.

00:07:06
Speaker 3: That’s gonna go on to play in the NFL.

00:07:08
Speaker 2: So I come in as a freshman in August, and that first week Coach Bryant made us scrimmage the varsity. He sicked the dogs. Horst, man! I mean, that’s been the way.

00:07:22
Speaker 3: I mean.

00:07:23
Speaker 2: So that first week, you scrimmage the returning national champions. I can remember like yesterday. And they ran this little belly play, and Steve Whitman was the fullback at that time.

00:07:36
Speaker 3: He hit it.

00:07:37
Speaker 2: This was one of these quick-hitting plays, and I was backsacked, tiny. And next thing you know, it’s just me and Steve. And Steve was about turn forty-five-, fifty-pound full.

00:07:45
Speaker 3: Back. And I’m like, “Man, what am I gonna do?”

00:07:49
Speaker 2: And I was one of those guys. I wasn’t afraid of anything. So I just come up and laid all one hundred and fifty-five pounds on a pop, and it didn’t bring him down.

00:08:00
Speaker 3: But I start riding till the posse got there.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks later, I’m coming in after practice, and I got a pink sticky note on my locker.

00:08:11
Speaker 3: And it said, “Coach Bryant want to see you.” Man! I am scared as all get out. I’m like, “What have I done? You know? What have I done wrong?”

00:08:21
Speaker 2: Anyway, I go up Third Florida Coleman Colliseum in his office.

00:08:28
Speaker 3: And letting the nose was secretary. She says it.

00:08:30
Speaker 2: “Coach be with you in a minute, man.” It was a long minute. The door opens up. She says, “You can go on in.” And when I walked in, Coach Bryant was sitting behind his desk, and he was smoking those Chesterfield cigarettes they smoked and didn’t have a filter on. And he was just… and he put it in the ash train.

00:08:50
Speaker 3: He just murmured some words.

00:08:52
Speaker 2: He had that old Southern drawl, and I interpreted to go sit on the couch. He had a black-and-white check of the couch in his office. When you sat down on it, your bottom hit the floor because he didn’t have any legs on it.

00:09:03
Speaker 3: So you looking up at.

00:09:04
Speaker 1: Him. And you’ve been listening to Jeremiah Castile tell one heck of a story about his life. And by the way, that scene of him being called into Bear Bryant’s office – and Bear is a big old man, like six-foot-four – and I can imagine this short guy’s sitting in a short couch and wondering what the heck is gonna happen next. When we come back, you’ll find out what does happen next here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and Jeremiah Castile’s story. Let’s pick up where he last left off in Coach Bear Bryant’s…

00:09:48
Speaker 2: Office. So I sit down, and the first words Coach Bryant said to me was:

00:09:56
Speaker 3: “You could play here at the University of…”

00:09:57
Speaker 2: Alabama. I’m thinking, “Yeah, well, my turn…”

00:10:03
Speaker 3: “Come.” I was behind Don.

00:10:04
Speaker 2: McNeil. He was a great one: six-foot-one, two hundred pounds, prototype NFL cornerback, gonna go in the first round to the Miami Dolphins and play…

00:10:14
Speaker 3: Ten years. Well, that’s who.

00:10:16
Speaker 2: I’m behind. So I’m thinking, “Yeah, I’ll play with my turn come.” Coach’s next words were, “You could play…

00:10:24
Speaker 3: …this year.”

00:10:28
Speaker 2: And I’m like, “Wow, Coach Bryant believe I could play this year!” There hasn’t been probably the greatest words ever been spoken to me. Was that God…

00:10:41
Speaker 3: …loved me.” Those were the next greatest words I.

00:10:44
Speaker 2: Tell people: I walked in five-nine, walked out six-nine when he said, “You could play… this year.” So what he was telling me was, “You’re not gonna play freshman football; you’re gonna play on…

00:10:55
Speaker 3: …the varsity!” And, boy, did I!

00:10:59
Speaker 2: Play! Yeah, so I had some confidence. But when Coach Bryant said that, it took me to an…

00:11:08
Speaker 3: …entire another level.

00:11:09
Speaker 2: Of confidence. It amazes me to this day how, because of that first initial meeting, and then from there on, what Coach Bryant said, I took it as the Gospel. Every word, I hung on every word he said, and it made me a great player. I look back, and I look at how I, you know, the numbers I put up as a corner, how I dominated the position, you know, averaging five interceptions. And that’s phenomenal, especially as a corner. You could see it as safety: twenty-one interceptions. As a corner? Oh, back when it was three yards and a cloud…

00:11:50
Speaker 3: …of dust.

00:11:50
Speaker 2: Per se. They just ran the ball majority. Of Time, and I look at that and I think, “What was it about me?” Well, it was my mindset. Coach Bryant told me I could play, and the way we were taught to play was with a spirit of excellence. “You don’t give up anything, man!” I mean, “You don’t give up any points!” You know, that year, probably one of the greatest defenses that Alabama ever fielded in all the years they’ve had a football program, because that team gave up less than a touchdown a game. That 1979 year, they had five shutouts. So I was just taught and coached to play the game with the spirit of excellence. Really, the word is “dominate.” So I’m upset if a guy catches an outroute on me. So that’s how I was coached, and I played in that manner. I took that on, that philosophy. And after four years, I was in All-American and had tied the record in interceptions, regular season, with sixteen. We wanted my freshman year. That was Coach Bryant’s last national championship, 1979. 1980, we had a great team; should have warned again. And we came up short, just for like some of the leadership. The guys – we had talent – but guys just really didn’t have the character that the seventy to nine…

00:13:13
Speaker 3: …team had. That’s the best way for me to.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: Put it. We had the ability, but we just didn’t have the character. I did a blog back in 2012. A friend of mine that played with me – he was younger than me – he said, “Hey, I think 2012, Coach Bryant would have been one hundred…”

00:13:25
Speaker 3: “…years old.” So he said, “Hey, won’t you think…”

00:13:28
Speaker 2: “…about some of the things Coach Bryant did for you, and right down, and I’ll talk about it.” And so, when I look at it, I go all way back to that first meeting: “Jeremiah, you could play here.” Coach Bryant took ten minutes, and he invested…

00:13:42
Speaker 3: …in me. From there, he.

00:13:45
Speaker 2: Influenced me. So when he said something, I believed that changed me, that impacted me. I saw that in my academics, my athletics, spiritually – all those areas I was involved. And so that influence was there in all three areas. Coach Bryant come in on some meetings and, “Men, y’all need to go to church tomorrow.” He tell you where to go. He tell you, “Go!” So he influenced me. From there, an inspiration came: how to.

00:14:17
Speaker 3: Live life. Coach.

00:14:18
Speaker 2: Bryant lived. You knew he was passionate about what he. Was doing. My senior year, ’82, this time of the year, we had spring ball. So one day, we go down. We get our baskets, gonna change clothes, get, look at our tenterary. Anytime that our itinerary had “S and S” on it, you start praying because it meant “stretch and scrimmage.” That’s all on our itinerary. You praying because you knew, “Oh, my goodness, there’s no time limit on this thing!” And Coach Bryant was going to have your body and your soul that day. So, anyway, that day, so we changed. We… And buses pull up. Everybody like, “What were getting on these buses for? We don’t… We scrimmage right here at the complex.” And we started asking the assistant coaches. “Don’t they…? Don’t know?” “Well, you mean you don’t know, you’re an assistant coach?” “No, nobody knew but Coach Bryant and the bus drippers.” No assistant coaches didn’t know. He took us over to Tuscaloos County High School. We get off the buses. Coach Bryant walks up, sir. Calls everybody up, and he says the first thing: “You say,” he said, “All you coaches, go sit up in the stands.” He put all the coaches in the stands. Coach Bryant coached the offense, the defense, and the special teams by himself. Made all the substitutions. You didn’t come out of the scrimmage unless he called…

00:15:45
Speaker 3: …your name.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: We started at four o’clock. The first group didn’t get through the ten that night. Lights came on. So what, that’s six hours later? Literally, I got seven, eight games of scrimmage plays in in that…

00:16:04
Speaker 3: …one scrimmage. Yeah, with.

00:16:07
Speaker 2: That. I’m talking about some guys got that many without before they ever got a break out of…

00:16:11
Speaker 3: …the scrimmage, and the next group got through about eleven.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: That night. So for me, I call it, “I’m in the fourth quarter of life now,” in my sixties. I saw a man at sixty-eight, sixty-nine years of age tell his staff, “Go sit up in the stands.” I still have a passion and a drive and an enthusiasm for what God called me to do. And so that is imprinted in me, not just in my mind. And so, for you to known me as a player back then, as a person, I was known as a…

00:16:51
Speaker 3: …quiet leader. I just didn’t.

00:16:53
Speaker 2: Talk much. And so, right before the captains get ready to go out this game, I’ve got a strong prompting in my gut to get up and…

00:17:18
Speaker 3: …it is. It’s.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: Totally impromptu. So I put my hand up. Real slow. “Coach Bryant,” I said, “Coach, can I say something?” He had on his big old Parker hat, come up over that, on that jacket. He just nodded, and when he said, “You know,” nod gave me a permission. It just flowed. I started with thanking Coach Bryant. “It’s a coach. I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done…

00:17:48
Speaker 3: …for me.”

00:17:50
Speaker 2: So, you know, I came here four years ago as an eighteen-year-old boy. But tonight, I’m gonna leave as a twenty-one-year-old man. I want to personally thank you for everything you’ve done for him. The coach: “Ain’t no way we’re gonna lose this game tonight! So if I got to play this sucker by myself, man, we’re gonna win!” And that thing was like it, like it was a match. It lit when it got our guys fired up. What I love about that, when I look back, is, you know, twenty-some days later, Coach Bryant passes away. And I just believe the Lord prompted me that, in front of my peers, I would tell my coach, “Thank you,”

00:18:25
Speaker 3: “for what he’d done.”

00:18:26
Speaker 2: “for me.” Probably every player in there should have stood up that night. He said, “Thank you, Coach.” God just prompted me. And after the game, I was on the standing up there on the stage where he was getting the trophy – Liberty BO Tro. I was standing next to I was getting the MVP trophy, and announcer was just congratulating him on his career. And I was standing next to him, and he said, “Oh, my career was…” And he put his arm…

00:19:06
Speaker 3: …encounter with Coach Bryant. And we’d like to thank.

00:19:09
Speaker 1: 1819 News for this story. 1819 is a multimedia company for the state of Alabama. Jeremiah Castile doing what almost anybody who played for Bear Bryant did, which is talk about how Bear turned him from a boy into a man with high standards, primarily a spirit of excellence. And as he put it, he wanted to dominate the other team. Dominance. And that’s how I was coached, he said. And I played that way. And those words of encouragement – because that’s what great coaches will do: they’ll hold you to standards; they’ll take it to the mats if there