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WAR DAMN EAGLE
(68.153.185.249) on 6/15/2007 - 1:57 p.m. says: ( 44 views
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"I bet Hobbes was part of the "slick pants" crowd."
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Coaching legend Pat Dye reflects on life, memories and love of Auburn
http://www.theplainsman.com/front/coaching_legend_pat_dye_reflects_on_life_memories_and_love_of_auburn
 Pat Dye and SummerBy VICTORIA CUMBOW
Editor
On the backside of the Coliseum, a living legend hides. In the dark, musty basement of Beard-Eaves is a small office. Once inside, the smallness of the room is shocking. There’s a polite assistant and another door at the back of the first room.
Behind the second door sits a silver-haired, older man. His smile radiates as if he could remind someone of a young, mischievious boy. His southern accent is just as thick as most remember it. There are no trophies, no rings and no orange and blue banners, only dull cinder blocks with three team photos, nothing adorning them but the expressions of glory and pride in the faces of the players.
Coach Pat Dye stands up and extends his hand. His eyes sparkle as if he’s much younger than he actually is.
“I like it down here,” Dye said. “I can hide from people.”
Dye is still active at Auburn.
“I feel because of the position that I held and things that have transpired during my life, I feel I have a lot of obligations I should fulfill as far as Auburn is concerned,” Dye said. “I’m not heavily involved, but still involved with fundraising and supporting the school everywhere I can.”
He calls himself a jack-of-all- trades, but his passion these days is anything to do with the outdoors.
Most know Dye as a hunter or a fisherman, but there has not been much of that lately.
“I really don’t do much hunting (and) I fish very little,” Dye said. “Really and truly right now, I plant stuff.”
Dye said he has an eye for real estate. He can look at a piece of property and see what it has the potential to be.
He lives on 740 acres with about 781 acres across the road. His house, a rugged log cabin, sits next to a pond. Three sides of the house border the pond, each side with a dock on the water. Inside, the banisters are made of finished tree limbs and trunks, and the walls are formed with large stones. His fireplace sits across the room from his kitchen table.
Above the table hangs an exquisite chandelier made of various deer antlers. Above is a loft with a wooden banister and two beds. The beds are covered in timeless red, white and blue patchwork. Everything is rustic with earth tones, and pictures of his four children and nine grandchildren adorn the tables and shelves throughout the house.
He lives with his longtime partner, Nancy MacDonald.
“My little ole house is a man’s house,” Dye said. “It’s one bedroom, and I didn’t have a woman in mind when I built it.”
MacDonald has her own separate place off the side of the house, which has a much more feminine touch. She, too, is involved in the outdoors, but her room shows the softer side of nature.
The spirit of Auburn resonates in Coach Dye, and he’s proud to be an Auburn man.
He’s proud of the Board of Trustees and the role they’ve played in Auburn through the years.
“The trustees have given the leadership to take this institution forward and (there’s been) tremendous growth in all areas,” Dye said.
Dye said he knows the trustees haven’t always been perfect, but he said the Board has consistently had to make tough decisions about the University as a whole, Those decisions have helped Auburn grow and prosper into the institution it is today.
“There’s always going to be power struggles, but somebody’s got to be responsible, and the Board of Trustees has shouldered that, and they’ve taken tremendous criticism,” he said. “But if you look at the whole total package and the whole picture and see it where it was in ‘81, and where we are today in 2007, it’s been tremendous growth.”
The Auburn Family
Dye told a story of two friends discussing the hiring of a coach before Dye was named. One of the men, John Roberts, said, ‘Don’t worry about Auburn, just love it.’
Dye said that’s the mindset of Auburn, and when people are griping and complaining, it’s mostly about themselves.
“When we go through these familiy squabbles, they’ll pass,” Dye said. “Just don’t lose your loyalty. It’s not Auburn causing it, it’s people causing it, so just love Auburn, and it will work itself out.”
Dye said in his 25 years at Auburn, the one group at Auburn to never falter is the students.
“The most stable group of all is the students,” he said. “They love Auburn.”
Dye said the right kind of kids come to Auburn, and they come for the right reasons.
“It’s just a big ole love affair,” Dye said. “It doesn’t make any difference if you drive a BMW or a Mercedes or a four-wheel drive pick-up, or if you wear blue jeans or slick pants, if you come to Auburn, you’re all right, and that’s just the way it is.”
All four of Dye’s children graduated from Auburn, and he said he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
“I think Auburn, the education here and the experience to go to school at Auburn gives you the tools to do whatever you want to do in life,” Dye said.
 Pat Dye He’s proud of Auburn and what graduates have done.
“We’ve put people on the moon, we’ve had Heisman trophy winners, Olympic gold medal winners and we just had one of our journalism graduates win a Pulitzer Prize,” he said.
Dye said he’s been other places, and nothing matches the environment at Auburn, the quality of people and the education students get.
Football Memories
When Dye starts talking about his football memories of Auburn, his eyes begin to glisten as if he’s in the moment. His first love is football, and he said he will always be a football man.
“I knew when I took the job at Auburn, if you’re going to survive here, you’ve got to beat Georgia and Alabama,” he said.
Dye remembers two games in particular.
“The most important win was in ‘82,” he said. “The most important game was in ‘89 because they came to Auburn.”
“That was big for Auburn, but it was also big for Alabama because now they play the Auburn game in Tuscaloosa where it should be played.”
Dye said he is usually focused before a game when he’s on the field, but that day in Auburn in ‘89, he got distracted.
“Before the kickoff, it was so loud,” he said. “And the student body, back then, they made those shakers out of paper mache, but when they were shaking them, the blue dust was coming off of it.
“Students were shaking those shakers so hard getting ready for kickoff, there was a blue cloud coming up out of the student section on that end of the stadium, and an orange sky because it was played late in the afternoon. I said, ‘Lord have mercy, would you look at that.’”
The only time he was nervous about the game was during Tiger Walk.
“I remember the look in people’s eyes,” he said. “I knew we were a better football team than Alabama, but when you’re in something that emotional, and all that emotion you use up and all that energy you use up before the game doesn’t help you, it hurts you.”
Dye said he wondered how in the world he was supposed to get that same emotion two hours later when he needed it, but as the history books show, he did.
Dye said that’s the most important game because of the field.
“That game was to be played in Auburn and Tuscaloosa on the home campuses,” he said.
He said the biggest win was in ‘82 when Auburn was close to a decade-long losing streak against Alabama.
“I was my second yer, and beating Alabama was important,” he said. “And we won the game.”
Looking Back
Looking back on his career at Auburn, he does have a few regrets, and most of them center around his family and football.
“Being a football coach, you know I’d do a lot of things different now having gone through it,” he said. “When you’re coaching, and you’re as intense as I was coaching, you’ve got tunnel vision, and you don’t spend as much time with the kids as you should.
“We did a lot of stuff together, but if I could go back, I’d do twice as much; I’d make time.”
Dye said it’s easy to justify doing something when you’re doing it, but coaching football is 365 days a year.
“You’re never not the head football coach at Auburn when you’re the head football coach, and there’s serious demands on your time, and all of it takes away from your family,” he said.
He regrets not coaching after retirement, and thinks he would’ve been better.
“I think about three years after I retired, I think I could’ve gone back and been a better football coach then when I was coaching (before),” he said. “I’d been a lot more patient, and I wouldn’t have had quite as much tunnel vision.”
He said looking back at being the head football coach and athletic director was astounding.
“It’s mindboggling when you sit down and think about the people that you represent,” he said.
He said it’s not just the athletes, it’s the University, the alumni, the student body, the state of Alabama and the tradition that is Auburn.
“It’s a big family that you’re responsible for, and I didn’t take it lightly that they all counted on me to make the right decisions,” he said. “Hopefully, I made more good ones than bad ones.”
When Dye first arrived, the athletic program was taking a $1.5 million from the University. When he left, the athletic department was giving the University half a million back.
“Instead of being a burden of the school, the athletic department became an assest to the school, and it’s a tremendous asset today,” he said.
In addition to giving money back to Auburn, Dye kicked off a fund drive to double the capacity of the library. He helped the University raise $5 million.
Dye said he chose the library because it’s a building everyone uses.
Dye has also been instrumental in raising money for the nursing school at Auburn. The nursing program is the only program at Auburn that is joined with the AUM program. He hosts an annual fundraiser for the program, the Blue Jean Ball. Because of the added fundraising for the school, it has grown in students.
“We have more applications than we can accept,” he said. “It’s tough when you have to turn down qualified applicants.”
The Good and The Bad
Since retiring from Auburn, Dye has received many honors, including being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and having the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium named in his honor.
He is quick to attribute his honors back to others.
“The first think you do is think back, ‘how did this happen’ and honestly, if you look back at the people you were surrounded with all your life, (they) had more to do with it than you did,” he said. “You were just part of the team.”
He said it all goes back to his parents, his coaches, mentors and players.
“I can name 100 individuals, that if it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
The naming of Pat Dye Field at Jordan-Hare Stadium is the honor that meant the most.
“If you’re going to look at something from a selfish standpoint, that would’ve been the biggest honor that I’ve ever gotten, that by far,” he said. “It’s an honor, but shared by many.”
MacDonald said it suits him because he enjoys nature so much.
“He thought it was fitting they named a piece of dirt after him,” she said.
When Coach Dye left Auburn, it was in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
Former Auburn player, Eric Ramsey, went public with tapes he claimed proved Dye and other athletic officials paid players.
Not all the tapes were released, and Dye was never accused of any wrongdoing, but Ramsey did enough damage to have Auburn placed on probation.
“I never really did get upset with Eric Ramsey because he was very, very vulnerable,” Dye said.
“He was a pretty good athlete, he wasn’t a great one, but he was a weak individual, character wise,” he said.
Dye said it was obvious there was a well-planned, thought-out scheme to extort money. He never blamed Ramsey for the incident, but feels Ramsey was persuaded by those around him.
“One individual ain’t going to tear Auburn down,” he said. “I knew he’d end up being the one that suffered.”
Dye said his career didn’t end exactly the way he wanted it to, but he’s at peace with himself about it.
“I know what Auburn was like when I got here and what it was like when I left,” he said. “I feel good about that.”
Dye lives about 15 minutes from Auburn. He can be found on his property working most days.
“I’m still developing that property,” he said. “Ultimately, I’d like to stay at home and grow trees and plants and flowers and shrubs,” he said. “You don’t change what the good Lord put there, just enhance it.”
On his land, Dye has two additional homes. One is a cabin called Crooked Oaks, and the other is a house, Auburn Oaks. He rents out the homes for all sorts of occasions.
“It’s for anybody that wants to go to a quiet place just to have a receoption a aprty, a business meeting, afamily gettogether or whatever,” he said. “It’s like living in Paradise.”
Dye said he didn’t get into it to start a big business, but he keeps improving the property, so he turned it into one.
“It’s a gorgeous piece of property,” he said.
Pat Dye is responsible for many things at Auburn. The calibur of the home field and stadium are due in large part to him. The Iron Bowl being played at Auburn’s true home is because of Pat Dye. Most importantly, he’s an Auburn man in every sense of the word, from tradition to integrity to excellence.Coaching legend Pat Dye reflects on life, memories and love of Auburn
http://www.theplainsman.com/front/coaching_legend_pat_dye_reflects_on_life_memories_and_love_of_auburn
Pat Dye and SummerBy VICTORIA CUMBOW
Editor
On the backside of the Coliseum, a living legend hides. In the dark, musty basement of Beard-Eaves is a small office. Once inside, the smallness of the room is shocking. There’s a polite assistant and another door at the back of the first room.
Behind the second door sits a silver-haired, older man. His smile radiates as if he could remind someone of a young, mischievious boy. His southern accent is just as thick as most remember it. There are no trophies, no rings and no orange and blue banners, only dull cinder blocks with three team photos, nothing adorning them but the expressions of glory and pride in the faces of the players.
Coach Pat Dye stands up and extends his hand. His eyes sparkle as if he’s much younger than he actually is.
“I like it down here,” Dye said. “I can hide from people.”
Dye is still active at Auburn.
“I feel because of the position that I held and things that have transpired during my life, I feel I have a lot of obligations I should fulfill as far as Auburn is concerned,” Dye said. “I’m not heavily involved, but still involved with fundraising and supporting the school everywhere I can.”
He calls himself a jack-of-all- trades, but his passion these days is anything to do with the outdoors.
Most know Dye as a hunter or a fisherman, but there has not been much of that lately.
“I really don’t do much hunting (and) I fish very little,” Dye said. “Really and truly right now, I plant stuff.”
Dye said he has an eye for real estate. He can look at a piece of property and see what it has the potential to be.
He lives on 740 acres with about 781 acres across the road. His house, a rugged log cabin, sits next to a pond. Three sides of the house border the pond, each side with a dock on the water. Inside, the banisters are made of finished tree limbs and trunks, and the walls are formed with large stones. His fireplace sits across the room from his kitchen table.
Above the table hangs an exquisite chandelier made of various deer antlers. Above is a loft with a wooden banister and two beds. The beds are covered in timeless red, white and blue patchwork. Everything is rustic with earth tones, and pictures of his four children and nine grandchildren adorn the tables and shelves throughout the house.
He lives with his longtime partner, Nancy MacDonald.
“My little ole house is a man’s house,” Dye said. “It’s one bedroom, and I didn’t have a woman in mind when I built it.”
MacDonald has her own separate place off the side of the house, which has a much more feminine touch. She, too, is involved in the outdoors, but her room shows the softer side of nature.
The spirit of Auburn resonates in Coach Dye, and he’s proud to be an Auburn man.
He’s proud of the Board of Trustees and the role they’ve played in Auburn through the years.
“The trustees have given the leadership to take this institution forward and (there’s been) tremendous growth in all areas,” Dye said.
Dye said he knows the trustees haven’t always been perfect, but he said the Board has consistently had to make tough decisions about the University as a whole, Those decisions have helped Auburn grow and prosper into the institution it is today.
“There’s always going to be power struggles, but somebody’s got to be responsible, and the Board of Trustees has shouldered that, and they’ve taken tremendous criticism,” he said. “But if you look at the whole total package and the whole picture and see it where it was in ‘81, and where we are today in 2007, it’s been tremendous growth.”
The Auburn Family
Dye told a story of two friends discussing the hiring of a coach before Dye was named. One of the men, John Roberts, said, ‘Don’t worry about Auburn, just love it.’
Dye said that’s the mindset of Auburn, and when people are griping and complaining, it’s mostly about themselves.
“When we go through these familiy squabbles, they’ll pass,” Dye said. “Just don’t lose your loyalty. It’s not Auburn causing it, it’s people causing it, so just love Auburn, and it will work itself out.”
Dye said in his 25 years at Auburn, the one group at Auburn to never falter is the students.
“The most stable group of all is the students,” he said. “They love Auburn.”
Dye said the right kind of kids come to Auburn, and they come for the right reasons.
“It’s just a big ole love affair,” Dye said. “It doesn’t make any difference if you drive a BMW or a Mercedes or a four-wheel drive pick-up, or if you wear blue jeans or slick pants, if you come to Auburn, you’re all right, and that’s just the way it is.”
All four of Dye’s children graduated from Auburn, and he said he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
“I think Auburn, the education here and the experience to go to school at Auburn gives you the tools to do whatever you want to do in life,” Dye said.
Pat Dye He’s proud of Auburn and what graduates have done.
“We’ve put people on the moon, we’ve had Heisman trophy winners, Olympic gold medal winners and we just had one of our journalism graduates win a Pulitzer Prize,” he said.
Dye said he’s been other places, and nothing matches the environment at Auburn, the quality of people and the education students get.
Football Memories
When Dye starts talking about his football memories of Auburn, his eyes begin to glisten as if he’s in the moment. His first love is football, and he said he will always be a football man.
“I knew when I took the job at Auburn, if you’re going to survive here, you’ve got to beat Georgia and Alabama,” he said.
Dye remembers two games in particular.
“The most important win was in ‘82,” he said. “The most important game was in ‘89 because they came to Auburn.”
“That was big for Auburn, but it was also big for Alabama because now they play the Auburn game in Tuscaloosa where it should be played.”
Dye said he is usually focused before a game when he’s on the field, but that day in Auburn in ‘89, he got distracted.
“Before the kickoff, it was so loud,” he said. “And the student body, back then, they made those shakers out of paper mache, but when they were shaking them, the blue dust was coming off of it.
“Students were shaking those shakers so hard getting ready for kickoff, there was a blue cloud coming up out of the student section on that end of the stadium, and an orange sky because it was played late in the afternoon. I said, ‘Lord have mercy, would you look at that.’”
The only time he was nervous about the game was during Tiger Walk.
“I remember the look in people’s eyes,” he said. “I knew we were a better football team than Alabama, but when you’re in something that emotional, and all that emotion you use up and all that energy you use up before the game doesn’t help you, it hurts you.”
Dye said he wondered how in the world he was supposed to get that same emotion two hours later when he needed it, but as the history books show, he did.
Dye said that’s the most important game because of the field.
“That game was to be played in Auburn and Tuscaloosa on the home campuses,” he said.
He said the biggest win was in ‘82 when Auburn was close to a decade-long losing streak against Alabama.
“I was my second yer, and beating Alabama was important,” he said. “And we won the game.”
Looking Back
Looking back on his career at Auburn, he does have a few regrets, and most of them center around his family and football.
“Being a football coach, you know I’d do a lot of things different now having gone through it,” he said. “When you’re coaching, and you’re as intense as I was coaching, you’ve got tunnel vision, and you don’t spend as much time with the kids as you should.
“We did a lot of stuff together, but if I could go back, I’d do twice as much; I’d make time.”
Dye said it’s easy to justify doing something when you’re doing it, but coaching football is 365 days a year.
“You’re never not the head football coach at Auburn when you’re the head football coach, and there’s serious demands on your time, and all of it takes away from your family,” he said.
He regrets not coaching after retirement, and thinks he would’ve been better.
“I think about three years after I retired, I think I could’ve gone back and been a better football coach then when I was coaching (before),” he said. “I’d been a lot more patient, and I wouldn’t have had quite as much tunnel vision.”
He said looking back at being the head football coach and athletic director was astounding.
“It’s mindboggling when you sit down and think about the people that you represent,” he said.
He said it’s not just the athletes, it’s the University, the alumni, the student body, the state of Alabama and the tradition that is Auburn.
“It’s a big family that you’re responsible for, and I didn’t take it lightly that they all counted on me to make the right decisions,” he said. “Hopefully, I made more good ones than bad ones.”
When Dye first arrived, the athletic program was taking a $1.5 million from the University. When he left, the athletic department was giving the University half a million back.
“Instead of being a burden of the school, the athletic department became an assest to the school, and it’s a tremendous asset today,” he said.
In addition to giving money back to Auburn, Dye kicked off a fund drive to double the capacity of the library. He helped the University raise $5 million.
Dye said he chose the library because it’s a building everyone uses.
Dye has also been instrumental in raising money for the nursing school at Auburn. The nursing program is the only program at Auburn that is joined with the AUM program. He hosts an annual fundraiser for the program, the Blue Jean Ball. Because of the added fundraising for the school, it has grown in students.
“We have more applications than we can accept,” he said. “It’s tough when you have to turn down qualified applicants.”
The Good and The Bad
Since retiring from Auburn, Dye has received many honors, including being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and having the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium named in his honor.
He is quick to attribute his honors back to others.
“The first think you do is think back, ‘how did this happen’ and honestly, if you look back at the people you were surrounded with all your life, (they) had more to do with it than you did,” he said. “You were just part of the team.”
He said it all goes back to his parents, his coaches, mentors and players.
“I can name 100 individuals, that if it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
The naming of Pat Dye Field at Jordan-Hare Stadium is the honor that meant the most.
“If you’re going to look at something from a selfish standpoint, that would’ve been the biggest honor that I’ve ever gotten, that by far,” he said. “It’s an honor, but shared by many.”
MacDonald said it suits him because he enjoys nature so much.
“He thought it was fitting they named a piece of dirt after him,” she said.
When Coach Dye left Auburn, it was in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
Former Auburn player, Eric Ramsey, went public with tapes he claimed proved Dye and other athletic officials paid players.
Not all the tapes were released, and Dye was never accused of any wrongdoing, but Ramsey did enough damage to have Auburn placed on probation.
“I never really did get upset with Eric Ramsey because he was very, very vulnerable,” Dye said.
“He was a pretty good athlete, he wasn’t a great one, but he was a weak individual, character wise,” he said.
Dye said it was obvious there was a well-planned, thought-out scheme to extort money. He never blamed Ramsey for the incident, but feels Ramsey was persuaded by those around him.
“One individual ain’t going to tear Auburn down,” he said. “I knew he’d end up being the one that suffered.”
Dye said his career didn’t end exactly the way he wanted it to, but he’s at peace with himself about it.
“I know what Auburn was like when I got here and what it was like when I left,” he said. “I feel good about that.”
Dye lives about 15 minutes from Auburn. He can be found on his property working most days.
“I’m still developing that property,” he said. “Ultimately, I’d like to stay at home and grow trees and plants and flowers and shrubs,” he said. “You don’t change what the good Lord put there, just enhance it.”
On his land, Dye has two additional homes. One is a cabin called Crooked Oaks, and the other is a house, Auburn Oaks. He rents out the homes for all sorts of occasions.
“It’s for anybody that wants to go to a quiet place just to have a receoption a aprty, a business meeting, afamily gettogether or whatever,” he said. “It’s like living in Paradise.”
Dye said he didn’t get into it to start a big business, but he keeps improving the property, so he turned it into one.
“It’s a gorgeous piece of property,” he said.
Pat Dye is responsible for many things at Auburn. The calibur of the home field and stadium are due in large part to him. The Iron Bowl being played at Auburn’s true home is because of Pat Dye. Most importantly, he’s an Auburn man in every sense of the word, from tradition to integrity to excellence.
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"Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark." -Aldo Leopold
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