Of course, I didn’t know Pat Dye while he was carving out a legendary era of Auburn football, imbuing the program with an incomparable will to win and a fearless attitude in all its endeavors. I cover the program that he left a monumental impact on — and shaped in a large way — but I cannot claim to have memories of he and the Tigers’ heroics. Those are for a specific, lucky generation.
But I did get to know the man who rarely spoke of football — who had a passion for Japanese maple trees, salsa, Western movies and horses, among other hobbies and interests developed during retirement.
During the summer break before my junior year at Auburn in 2018, I worked May through July at his farm and radio show as an intern.
At the time, I knew the moments I was witnessing and experiencing were special. Heck, I remember him once reminiscing on a conversation he once had with Bear Bryant, and I just started shaking my head and smiling, in disbelief at the stories I got to hear just by being in the same room as Dye. The man was a walking and talking legend.
Now he's gone, and those memories are priceless. I'm so lucky to have made them.
But will larger-than-life figures such as Coach Dye ever really leave us?
Of course not — not if we share his legacy as a coach, mentor and friend, which, of course, the Auburn community will continue to do forever.
So here’s my contribution to that effort. This was my summer with Coach.
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My first day at his property, I asked my intern director what I should call Dye when I met him later that afternoon. She said he’s most used to people calling him “Coach” or “Coach Dye,” so I always chose the former. That’s what I’ll be referring to him as in these stories.
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I saw plenty of other dogs happily roam and prance about the grounds at Quail Hollow Gardens and Crooked Oaks Hunting Preserve while I was an intern there, but Tiny and Tom are the most memorable.
There’s no use guessing his breed or lineage. Tom is a downright mutt. Coach once told me he and Tom had that in common — that neither were purebred, run-of-the-mill or by any means flashy.
Tom became the poster child — or, dog — for the Crooked Oaks branding. Plastered on memorabilia are rough illustrations of Coach with his arm around Tom. He looked like your stereotypical hunting dog in those drawings — a good disguise job by the mutt.
Tiny, on the other hand, didn’t appear on shirts and mugs. While Tom would lay at your feet, Tiny would make herself comfortable in your lap as soon as you sat down, wagging her little tail at a violent pace and licking your neck — which was unfortunate, because she’s a beagle, and beagles smell awful.
But good luck saying no to that face.
Most days of the week, Coach woke up before the sun and drove to a truck stop just outside Notasulga, Ala. He loved to read the newspaper before anyone else did, and he ordered a brandless coffee and biscuit every time.
One morning, Coach told me, he happened to peer above his paper to see a small dog in the middle of the four-lane highway, dodging traffic but unable to make her way to one side or the other.
Coach put down his biscuit and waited for traffic to slow before walking into the middle of the road and scooping up Tiny.
He plopped her in the passenger’s seat of his navy pickup truck and took her back to the farm, no questions asked. There was always more room for another dog, he would say.
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Tom once hopped in a golf cart with me and an another intern as we drove to meet Coach at the Barn Bedroom, a trailer-sized, hotel-esque space in the center of Coach’s land that fans can book during hunting trips and stays at the farm.
We were tidying up, preparing for a woman to arrive that weekend — a massive Auburn fan who wanted to ride some of Coach’s horses. She did just that, touring the property’s thousands of acres on the backs of Shug and Tiger, both beautiful, mild-mannered animals. Coach sometimes tagged along, riding his trusted steed, Iron Man.
After an hour or so organizing the bedrooms, kitchen and entertainment area inside, Coach wanted to sit and rest for a minute. I sat beside him in a rocking chair on the porch.
That minute grew into 30 minutes, then into an hour, then into what felt like two hours, as Coach was in a talkative mood. Of course, I was always in a mood to intently listen.
That was my longest conversation with Coach. He spoke some about football — what he liked and disliked about his playing days at Georgia, and what he thought of the current Auburn program (he was a massive fan of Gus Malzahn’s, by the way).
But football wasn’t his favorite thing to talk about. I didn’t bring it up that day, but the way he put it, he had played football, coached it and written books about for years and years and years.
That day, he wanted to talk about movies — Westerns in particular. When he was a boy, he made a point to see every Western movie he could. He loved the cowboys and Indians plots. The more swashbuckling, the better. Later in life, he loved Clint Eastwood. He told me he wanted to get a bunch of Auburn fans together on the farm one night to watch Westerns on a big screen.
Maybe we could project it onto a white sheet somewhere on the property, I suggested.
“That’s a really good idea, Nathan,” Coach responded.
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The other intern and I of course did most of the work moving things about in the Barn Bedroom. Coach wanted to help, yes, but oftentimes he accompanied us on our tasks just so he could say, when we were done, “Well, I’m hungry for some Mexican food. How about y’all?” We always said yes. Duh.
Eventually, I could see the question coming hours before he asked it. If we were out working with Coach close to lunch time, which was about once a week, we were getting Mexican.
I always called shotgun in his pickup truck. There was room for three more in the back. Coach was a great driver.
His favorite Mexican restaurant — probably the only Mexican restaurant for miles — only sat 20 or 30 people. Coach refused to let anyone else pay, of course. He knew all the servers by name, which was good for him, because he was always asking for more salsa. Coach could obliterate some salsa.
Not that he wasn’t always upbeat and fun, but when I saw Coach the giddiest was in that restaurant. Our visits always included an intern older than I — someone who had been with the farm a few years instead of just one summer. That person of course knew Coach better than the rest of us, so he or she drove the conversation.
One time Coach insisted to know everything about my parents, siblings and girlfriend. He always had one low-hanging and corny but nonetheless hilarious joke in him. Everyone’s laughter filled the place up to the roof.
I felt comfortable enough after that lunch to ask Coach in the parking lot if I could drive his truck back to the farm — as a joke. His response told me he didn’t perceive that I was joking. He drove back.
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The hottest day that summer also happened to be the day I spent the most time outside — the day I helped Coach plant a monster maple tree.
Coach always wanted to be different, and he always envisioned a farm after retirement. Following football, he developed a love for Japanese maples, of which there are more than 5,000 at his property. He planted every single one himself.
The trees on the farm were Coach’s babies. If there was no specific business to attend to that day, Coach drove around, stopping every so often to check up on various trees — from sapling to full-grown maple.
Coach loved for customers to make their way out to the farm to purchase the trees, that way he could show off the collection he’d been building for years. But that wasn’t always a possibility, so the farm also offered delivery.
In mid-June we took Coach’s truck, another car packed with interns and workers, and a big loading truck with a maple tree inside to a house near the Opelika area.
I’m not sure why Coach’s policy was such that we planted the tree for this person in his front yard. I assumed when someone bought a tree, we dropped it off, and that was that.
Nevertheless, we spent hours upon hours digging in this man’s garden, creating space for the massive tree. After digging deep and wide enough, we took the tree out of the pot and surrounded it with soil. That process took hours, too. It was at this point I was questioning why I ever applied for this internship in the first place.
But to hear Coach in the days that followed, calling that man and checking up on the tree, happy to hear it was in good health and looked “perfect” in the man’s yard, made the grueling task worthwhile.
Coach didn’t just stand off to the side, however, when a tree needed planting or other work needed heavy lifting on the farm. He was fit; Coach spent most days in the sun, walking, planting and tending to his trees, after all. He was not, by any means, a frail man. That toughness instilled in Auburn football many years ago was very much still on display.
My intern director once told me that, a few months before I started, Coach had a reunion with some old friends at the farm. They rode horses, stayed in the Barn Bedroom and probably ate Mexican food.
These were friends around Coach’s age, mind you, not former players. Of course his former Tigers looked younger than him whenever they came to visit. But among his older buddies, Coach stuck out in the crowd, she said, in the best possible way. He had a vibrant and lively glow to him.
Maybe that’s why I, along with many other people in the Auburn community who knew him in some way, truly thought it was a no-brainer that he would overcome his ailment last month, regardless of his age.
He’s Pat Dye, after all, the man who definitely kicked my butt while planting that ungodly heavy maple tree.
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Short story: I sat in Coach’s living room, interviewing him about Bo Jackson for an entry our intern director wanted on the website. He begrudgingly agreed.
Coach had a few cats inside. They never left the house — probably to keep from being accosted by the army of canines. I can’t remember if they were all his or if some of the cats belonged to his partner, Ms. Nancy, who had her own cabin next door.
Anyway, when Coach got invested in a story, there was no derailing it. He spoke slowly but intentionally. He could see the finish line even if you couldn’t.
He was telling me about Jackson’s freshman year, and how some of his senior leaders on Auburn’s defense foretold that Jackson would one day contend for the Heisman Trophy. I remember a few words after he said “Heisman,” one of the cats knocked over a lamp the next room over. The shattering wasn’t at all quiet. I jumped and quickly turned around.
Coach didn’t flinch. He continued to tell the story as if the house had remained silent. I know so because I went back and listened to the recording, and he didn’t miss a beat.
He only half-acknowledged the incident as he was walking me out and we walked past the wreckage, making some passing comment about how the cats always get into trouble.
I listened to the recording when I got in my car to make sure my suspicions were correct. I laughed the whole drive back.
I told the other interns about it when I returned, and apparently, I wasn’t the first witness to such an incident. Ms. Nancy has to replace lamps all the time, they said.
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As the internship reached its closing month, we all began to find our niches. For some reason, no one else consistently volunteered to accompany Coach to record his radio show Tuesday mornings.
I loved it. I looked forward to Tuesdays. I hadn’t yet begun to cover big-time Auburn sports as a serious student journalist, so meeting the likes of Hal Baird, Butch Thompson, David Housel and others was all new and exciting to me.
That was most of my job — greeting the show’s guests and making him or her comfortable in the studio, and also keeping my laptop handy for any stats or tidbits that Coach or host Tim Ellen wanted to know during breaks for the next segment.
When Stacy Searels, an All-American offensive lineman under Coach at Auburn and currently North Carolina’s O-line coach, visited Coach at the farm one weekend, he hung around an extra few days to come on the show.
Most of the time, Coach didn’t cater to standard radio etiquette of passing around the talking stick or keeping anecdotes short and sweet.
Again, if Coach had a story in mind, you were going to hear it in all its glory. That’s what Auburn fans grew to love so much about his radio program.
All anyone in the room could do was shake their heads and laugh when Coach brought up former Auburn quarterback Jeff Burger, who was Searels’ roommate during their AU playing days.
Before his senior year at quarterback, Burger was arrested outside a restaurant in Auburn for fighting and was bailed out by Pat Sullivan, then Auburn’s QBs coach.
Coach laughed as he said to Searels that players nowadays would be kicked off the team for such an incident. Searels, who was Miami’s offensive line coach in 2018, agreed. Coach said he instead gave Burger a slap on the wrist in more ways than one, but he of course didn’t dive into what he meant by that, other than explaining during a break in the show that he doesn’t remember ever yelling at a player louder than he did to Burger in his office following the arrest.
No edition of the Pat Dye Show could ever out-class Housel’s guest appearance, though.
The former Auburn athletic director, for whom the Jordan-Hare Stadium press box is named, came on in July, a few weeks before my internship concluded. If I recall correctly, the final weeks for me consisted of mostly housekeeping items at the farm, so this particular radio show was one of my last.
I helped Housel out of his car and sat with him in the ESPN 106.7 green room until Coach arrived. Housel wanted to know everything about me in the few minutes before the show. He’s as kind a man as you’ll ever meet.
Before he served as athletic director from 1994-2005, Housel was Coach’s sports information director at Auburn — his right-hand man. As conversations often swayed with Coach, the two began to talk about the Iron Bowl on the radio show and how, if not for Coach’s ruthless efforts, the series wouldn’t look anything like how fans know it today.
“Fans of this generation have no idea what (the Iron Bowl) was like,” Housel said on the show. “That’s a good thing. They never had to go to Birmingham.”
Normally, Coach hustled back to the farm following Tuesday recording sessions. “There’s a tree with my name on it,” he would say.
But he didn’t want to rush his visit with Housel, one of his oldest friends. The two talked and talked in the green room, with Housel praising Coach for all he’d done post-football: the farm, the radio show, his continued involvement and leadership for Auburn athletics.
“How much would Bear (Bryant) have loved this, huh, Pat?” Housel said as he gestured around the radio station.
“Oh yes,” Coach laughed. “If Bear was still here, you couldn’t put our conversations out on the radio, though.”
I gave Housel a Pat Dye Show coffee mug and helped him back into his car. He asked me to remind him my name again.
As I stood outside his driver’s side door and told him to drive safe, he reached his arm through the window and shook my hand. Housel held firm with that hand and pointed to the radio station with the other as he told me, “That’s a special, special Auburn man in there, Nathan.”
I know, Mr. Housel. I know.
