‘What Auburn has done for me’: Coach Pat Dye’s last team meeting

‘What Auburn has done for me’: Coach Pat Dye’s last team meeting‘What Auburn has done for me’: Coach Pat Dye’s last team meeting

Pat Dye Auburn football Letterman 1989 team reunion on Friday, Nov. 29, 2019 in Auburn, Ala.Todd Van Emst/AU Athletics

AUBURN, Ala. – As he had done 30 years before in this same venue, Pat Dye once again addressed his 1989 Auburn football team.

Three decades earlier, after the first Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium, he told the victorious Tigers, "Tonight's what our program's all about. Ain't no easy way in life, and it wasn't easy out there tonight, but you were prepared for the task."

All these years later, on the eve of the 2019 Iron Bowl, the '89 Tigers leaned in to hear every word their 80-year-old coach offered.

"We weren't the favorites," Dye said at the team's 30-year reunion on Nov. 29, 2019. "We might have been the underdogs. But that's all right. Every morning I woke up all my life I've been an underdog. I had two older brothers, one of them two years older than me and one of them four years older than me. I got my (tail) whipped every day. I never liked it.

"Failing won't hurt you. You don't like it. It hurts you, but if you've got the right kind of stuff in you it'll make you work a little harder next time. And that's kind of what we're made out of."

It was, in a sense, Coach Dye's last team meeting. One more opportunity to motivate, to encourage, to share his love for Auburn.

"Have you ever heard any of our opponents say, 'Auburn outsmarted us?'" Dye asked. "You never heard of Auburn outsmarting anybody while I was coaching, but we beat their (tail) to a pulp.

"Not only that, you could bet against them the next week and you'd win your money because they wouldn't be able to get them all on the field."

Dye recalled recruiting the players 35 years earlier, when these 50-year-olds were still teenagers.

"The guys who came through this program and the mamas and daddies that let me in their homes to recruit the kids to become a part of this institution, I'm grateful for them," he said. "Because I knew every time I went through the front door that I was going to present them with a chance to have a better life, if they stayed and played and went to school here.

"That's true with all of the students, that's not just football players and athletics. Be proud of the fact that you've got an Auburn background. The right kind of kids are coming to Auburn and it didn't surprise me at all to see Auburn's student body is the happiest student body in America."

Members of the 1989 team wiped away tears as their coach continued, perhaps reflecting on the bonds they'd formed in their youth, back when preseason camp consisted of four-a-days.

"There's a lot of love in this room," Dye said. "Not just me to the players or players to me. It's players to each other. The love that you've got for Auburn University. Nothing that you could give me means any more than how much you care about this institution and what It's meant for all of us, and meant to all of us."

Reflecting on his decision to become Auburn's coach in 1981, Dye said he knew he was the right fit when he read the Auburn Creed. 

"There's not a morning or a day goes by, every day, I think how I have been blessed by my experience and being part of this institution, and I didn't have anything to do with building it and making it like it is," he said. "I just bought into what they already believed.

"When I picked up the Auburn Creed and read it, I didn't know anything about Auburn, I said, 'Damn, this is me. This is what I believe. I believe in hard work.'

"And I got on down there a little further and the line in there that resonates the loudest with me – 'having a spirit that is unafraid,' – now you think about that. Having a spirit that is unafraid. I said, 'This is me.' And it kind of took off from there."

Now it wasn't just the players who were crying. Through tears, the coach who had given so much to his school somehow still felt indebted. 

"I could live another 80 years and I could never do for Auburn what Auburn has done for me."

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer