EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

A man legendary for his toughness put that character trait on display in an unforgettable way in 1935.

Paul “Bear” Bryant — then a senior end at Alabama — played in a game vs. Tennessee a week after suffering a broken fibula in his left leg. He’d suffered the injury in a 20-7 loss to Mississippi State in Tuscaloosa, returning to the game in the fourth quarter after having the leg “tightly bandaged,” according to an Associated Press report at the time.

Alabama did not play Auburn from 1908-1947, so the Tennessee game was invariably the biggest on the Crimson Tide’s schedule. Alabama had gone undefeated and won the Rose Bowl in 1934, and had beaten Robert Neyland’s Volunteers on the way to SEC championships in each of the previous two seasons.

The night before the 1935 Alabama-Tennessee game in Birmingham, the team doctor visited the Crimson Tide’s hotel and cut Bryant’s cast off. He told Bryant that he could dress for the game if he felt up to it, Bryant wrote in Bear, his 1975 autobiography.

“I said, ‘Is there any chance of a bone sticking out anywhere?’” Bryant wrote. “He said no.”

Bryant also related a pre-game pep talk given the following day by assistant coach Hank Crisp, who had recruited Bryant to Alabama from his native Arkansas. Crisp made reference to Bryant by his uniform number, which often changed on a game-by-game basis under then-head coach Frank Thomas.

“I’ll tell you gentlemen one thing,” Bryant quoted Riley as saying. “I don’t know about the rest of you, you or you or you, I don’t know what you’re going to do. But I know one damn thing. Old 34 will be after ’em, he’ll be after their asses.”

“So he’s up there talking about old 34, and I look down, and I’m 34!” Bryant remembered. “I had no idea of playing. So we go out there, and cold chills are running up my back. He done bragged on old 34.

“… They lined up for the kickoff, and Coach Thomas turned to me and said, ‘Bryant, can you play?’ Well shoot, what could I say? I just ran on out there.”

Alabama end Ben McLeod, who had been ticketed to start in Bryant’s place, told author Kirk McNair in 2005 that Bryant “didn’t play long, maybe a quarter, but he played well. … That Bryant was about as tough as they come.”

Alabama won the game 25-0, with Bryant — described as “the injured Bear” by the Birmingham News’ Zipp Newman in the following day’s paper — catching at least four passes. One went for 21 yards, another for a total of 22 yards after a lateral to Riley Smith, another for 14 yards and the last for 30 yards.

The story made headlines around the Southeast, with Atlanta Constitution sports editor Ralph McGill writing that Bryant “deserves a medal for courage.” Heading into Alabama’s late October game vs. Georgia in Athens, McGill traveled to Tuscaloosa to visit with Bryant in person.

“When the Alabama team trots on Sanford Field at Athens next Saturday, pick out Paul (Bear) Bryant’s number and locate him,” McGill wrote. “When your eyes are on it, lift your hat. You will be looking at a man.”

McGill added that he’d personally verified Bryant’s injury.

“It was no press agent’s dream, no doctor’s error,” McGill wrote. “I saw the X-rays. And I saw Bear Bryant’s leg still almost twice its size Tuesday. … As far as this season is concerned, Paul Bryant is in first place in the courage league. … When you have a top for this story let me know.”

Despite the win over Tennessee, Alabama was not quite as strong a team as the 1934 squad that featured All-Americans Don Hutson and Dixie Howell. In addition to the loss to Mississippi State, the Crimson Tide played Howard (now Samford) to a 7-7 tie in its season opener and lost 14-6 at Vanderbilt to end the season at 6-2-1 and fail in its attempt to repeat as SEC champion.

The Bryant broken leg story has become part of his legend, as much as wrestling the animal that gave him his nickname as a youth and all the games and championships he won as a coach. In a 1981 interview with Al Browning of the Tuscaloosa News, however, Bryant allowed that maybe his condition had been a little bit embellished.

“The injury was not that serious,” Bryant told Browning. “It was just a little crack in a small bone in my leg. … Every time weight came down on it, I knew (the injury) was there. And if I stubbed my toe or anyone hit it, why it hurt.”

More likely, Bryant was showing humility in his later years and downplaying the idea of bragging on himself. Either way, it’s a well-established fact that Bryant not only played — but was a difference-maker — against Tennessee in 1935 despite a broken leg.

And that’s a story worth remembering.

Coming Sunday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 34, when Alabama ushered in the Saban era with a statement win in Atlanta.