Suffering Fueled His Greatness: John Hannah on What It Took to Be the Best Offensive Lineman of All Time

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for The American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our next story comes to us from the guy Sports Illustrated said was the greatest offensive lineman of all time. John Hannah was a two-time All-American at the University of Alabama. Was selected fourth overall by the New England Patriots in the 1973 NFL Draft. Hannah received nine Pro Bowl selections and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991. Hannah shared this story first with 1819 News, a multimedia company with the State of Alabama. Here’s John Hannah sharing two moments in his life that pushed him towards excellence. One story is from his youth, another from his time spent under legendary Coach Bear Bryant in Alabama. Let’s take a listen.

In the fourth grade, I was nine years old and Canton, and there were two playgrounds, and they were on terraces. There’s one upper terrace and a playground down below. And I was up up down on the lower terrace playing kickball with a bunch of guys, and all of a sudden, about seven or eight guys on the top of the top terrace started serenading me with a song. And it went like this: It says, “Fatty, fatty, two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door,” and so it hurt. So I go home, told my mom about it. Mom called my dad. Now, you know, most parents would either call the principal or call the parents. Dad didn’t do any of that. He was different. The boy that was coaching the sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade football team had played for Dad. So Dad called him up, asked him if I could play for him. He said, ‘Sure.’ So that night, Dad comes in, he says, ‘John, I talked to the junior high coach, and it ain’t going to be easy.’ ‘It’s going to be hard. But if you can go out for that sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade team, I believe you can do it. And if you go out there and make that team, they’ll no longer call you ‘Fatty, fatty, two before’ anymore.’ So I went out as a nine-year-old and played. Not only that, want to start in position. First game, broke my nose. Dad wanted to pull me from the game. I told him no. And he said, ‘Well, why not?’ I said, ‘Fatty, fatty, two before.’ So the whole first part of my life, when it was football, it was because I wanted to be somebody besides ‘Fatty, fatty, two by four.’ So that was kind of what got me going into football. Well, Coach Bryant, you know, was a legend way before I got there. But immediately before I got there, Alabama was going through some struggling times, you know, and struggling for them at six and four. So, you know, it was, it was, it was. It wasn’t a great time to go to Alabama. So the biggest lesson that Coach Bryant taught me was was that you can go further than you ever thought you could. I remember my sophomore year, a week before we played Southern Cal. It was, I mean, scorching hot, humid, and Coach Bryant came through the tunnel to get to the practice field, and he was whistling ‘Amazing Grace.’ I knew it was going to be a roughing. So after about a forty-five-minute individual drills, we got to doing our scrimmage, our controlled scrimmage, and we went and we went, and we kept going, and all of a sudden, the guys in the huddle would just fall out. And it was, you know, I think at the end of the day there are about ten guys that sent the hospital with heatstroke and dehydration. Several others hit gone with either knees or broken bones or something. I mean, it was just one of those rock-’em, sock-’em days. And anyway, I get back to crawl up the stairs to my bedroom, and I hear all the suitcases clicking, and hear the trunk of cars closing, and people driving off, and a lot of people left. And I said, ‘I’m gonna quit too,’ but bad blame it, ‘I’ve earned supper.’ So anyway, I fell asleep and didn’t go to eat supper. Woke up the next morning, and I said, ‘Well, heck, I’m here, might as well stay.’ And anyway, we went to the three out at three o’clock meeting, and Coach Bryant comes in. He winds that watch. He said, ‘Well, boys, I’m a little early, but we’ll go ahead and get started.’ Anyway, every day five minutes before, that’s when the meetings started. Night, he goes in. He says, ‘Boys, y’all learn the big listeners today.’ He said, ‘You’ll push yourself and push yourself, and you’ll think you’re going to die. But the human body is an amazing machine. It’ll always pass out before it dies.’ And it clicked. And, you know, my dad had also told me, you know, and he preached the same gospel as Coach Bryant did. He said, ‘There’s an invisible bear, I think, somewhere,’ and he says, ‘You’ll push yourself up to that bear and you’ll back off, and you’ll push it and you’ll back off.’ But he says, ‘Someday, either fear or anger or some emotion is going to drive you through that barrier.’ And if you ever break that barrier, you’re gonna find out that there’s a whole world out there that you’ve never experienced. And that’s what—that’s what Coach Bryant got for. When I went into pro ball, wasn’t I, wasn’t a great get, most gifted athlete, but I knew I could probably outwork everybody and played in front up, even in the, you know, if I got my butt whooped in the first quarter, I’d last out to where I’d come out ahead at the end, anyway. That was—that was kind of the attitude I had because of what I’d learned from Coach Bryant.

And a special thanks to the folks at 1819 News for the audio, and thanks to Greg Hangler for editing and producing that piece of storytelling. And a special thanks to John Hannah for sharing those two stories—that enduring memory of how his father treated that discrimination, basically, that weight discrimination, that taunting. And he just said, ‘Buckle up, strap up, and just work through it, push yourself through it.’ There’s victims, and there’s victors, and sometimes legitimate victims, but often it’s our own expectations and our own diminished expectations from ourselves and our adult supervising us that create the limits that stop us. John Hannah’s story, storytelling about fatherhood, about coaching, about so much more. Here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories and America like we do, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the ‘Donate’ button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com.