They called him Brother. That’s the first thing you remember about Bill Oliver. The nickname stuck to him like one of his pesky defensive backs on a slick receiver. He was a one-name big name in the one sport that always mattered most in this state.

His legacy has remained secure since his retirement in 1998. It will survive his death this week at the age of 85 as well.

If you were fortunate enough to watch him work or witness the fruits of his labor, you felt like you knew the man even if you never really got to know him. By word and deed, individual opinion and virtual acclamation, he may have been the greatest assistant football coach on either side of the Iron Bowl rivalry. His reputation was enhanced, when it wasn’t questioned, because he worked on both sides of that perilous divide and what he did worked so often and so well.

His actual first name was never necessary. His surname was simply superfluous. If someone started to tell a football story around here over the last four or more decades and they introduced a character named Brother, that was all the identification you needed.

You knew the subject. They were talking about the Alabama defensive coordinator. Or the Auburn defensive coordinator.

They were discussing the man who woulda coulda shoulda succeeded Gene Stallings as the Alabama head coach. Or Terry Bowden as the Auburn head coach.

They were praising his ability to mold talented individuals into a unit, to devise a game plan that would discombobulate an opponent, to bait a hook or a quarterback with expert precision. Or they were questioning his loyalty to Auburn because he played and coached at Alabama, to Alabama because he spent two separate tours of duty on the Plains.

Forget that he had a winning record in four seasons as a head coach at Tennessee-Chattanooga. He was the ultimate assistant, part of a small handful of elite football lifers who earned induction into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame primarily because of their work as brilliant lieutenants. Think Georgia’s Erk Russell, Florida State’s Mickey Andrews, Alabama’s Ken Donahue and Mal Moore and Woody McCorvey of Alabama and Clemson.

As strong as the others’ resumes remain, Oliver is one of one because he occupied second-in-command positions at both Alabama and Auburn. 

As a young defensive backs coach at Auburn in 1969, he put together the plan that led to nine interceptions in a win over Florida, a single-game record that still stands.

As the veteran defensive coordinator at Alabama in 1992, he produced an absolute unit that led the nation in rushing, passing, total and scoring defense and powered the Crimson Tide to a national championship.

That gold standard defense won the Iron Bowl with a shutout highlighted by an Antonio Langham pick-six and the first SEC Championship Game against Florida in a thriller decided by another Langham interception return for a touchdown.

Those nightmarish occasions for Pat Dye and Steve Spurrier were just a sneak peek of Oliver’s genius, setting the stage for his masterpiece, a game plan so perfectly outrageous and outrageously perfect that it’s a core memory of Alabama 34, Miami 13.

On that shocking, stirring night in New Orleans, the Tide didn’t line up 11 defenders across the line of scrimmage from Heisman winner Gino Torretta on every snap. It only felt like it to the bewildered quarterback, his teammates and their coaching staff, who couldn’t figure out a way to score a single offensive touchdown.

Miami’s swagger had no answers for Oliver’s outside-the-box, everybody-in-the-box scheme, and Alabama had the only big ring it would earn between the tenures of Bear Bryant and Nick Saban. It was the fifth title of Oliver’s time in Tuscaloosa, one as a player, four as a coach.

Not long after that triumph, there was a time when Oliver believed Stallings would retire to his ranch and he would succeed him as head coach. Instead the AD who actually hired him as defensive coordinator, Hootie Ingram, stepped down in the wake of NCAA sanctions against the football program.

With his champion gone and Stallings still on the job, Oliver later shocked the state after the 1995 season by accepting Terry Bowden’s offer to run the Auburn defense. The slow decline from Bowden’s torrid 20-0 start had already begun, but the Tigers did win the SEC West with Oliver as defensive coordinator in 1997. They came up a point short of beating Peyton Manning and Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game, and it was straight downhill from there.

When Bowden resigned midway through the next season, Oliver was named the interim coach. He believed he had been promised the permanent head coaching position, but the Tigers hired Tommy Tuberville instead.

So we’re left to wonder what might’ve happened at Alabama had Oliver stayed until Stallings retired and gotten the job that went to Mike DuBose. How might Auburn’s path have changed had the program removed Oliver’s interim tag instead of hiring that Riverboat Gambler from Ole Miss?

Alternate histories can be enticing, but let’s not dwell on what might have been. There was no mystery during his long and successful life, and there will be no debate now that he’s gone. Bill Oliver was as good as it gets on the only side of the ball that moves multitudes in Bryant-Denny and Jordan-Hare to stand and shout its name: De-fense! De-fense! De-fense!

For Brother, like no other, that was the name of the game.