The old football coach almost came out of retirement to coach Baylor not that long ago. Hayden Fry talks about that 2002 pursuit from the Bears almost casually now.

Many college football fans still aren't even aware that if Fry hadn't been diagnosed with prostate cancer, he never would have retired from coaching Iowa in the first place.

Most identified with the Midwest, Fry is actually a Texan. He was born in Eastland, spent most of his childhood in Odessa and played quarterback at Baylor. The lure of returning to help the Bears was strong.

Fry — who will be in Houston this week to accept the Lifetime Achievement award at the Bear Bryant Awards Thursday night dinner benefiting the American Heart Association at the Hyatt Regency — figures it worked out for everyone though.

Art Briles (one of this year's finalists for the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year award) eventually took over as Baylor's coach in 2008, a quarterback recruit named Robert Griffin III followed him and well, Fry knows magic when he sees it.

"I think Art's done a fantastic job with the program," Fry tells CultureMap in a one-on-one phone interview. "And I just love RG3. He's fun to watch."

Fry jumped on the Griffin III bandwagon early this season, getting captivated in the Bears' 50-48 opening Friday night shootout win over TCU.

Fry's offenses at Iowa played much more imaginative than you might think, especially for that era in the Big Ten and he believes that the player who many coaches wanted to turn into a wide receiver would have been a game-changing quarterback for almost any program.

"He can throw the football," Fry says. "He's not a one-dimensional running quarterback."

The 82-year-old Fry is still something of a multi-threat himself. The College Football Hall of Famer never quite received the national spotlight of a Bobby Bowden — last year's Bear Bryant Lifetime Achievement honoree — but Fry might be able to beat Bowden in homespun wisecracks.

Which is like beating Roger Nadal at tennis.

"No, I don't return to Texas and Houston often at all," Fry deadpans. "I owe too many people too much money to go back.

"Going back for the Bear Bryant should be interesting. Don't tell anybody where I'm staying."

Fry has more.

When asked if he golfs, the coach who retired to a golf community in Nevada, cracks, "Not when anybody can see me. I try to make sure that nobody knows me wherever I golf. I'm the only guy who can hook his putts."

No Super Conference Fan

Fry is still serious about college football though. He spends his fall weekends watching games, especially those that involve programs run by guys from his impressive coaching tree (which include Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Kansas State's Bill Snyder — another of this year's Coach of the Year finalists — and Wisconsin's Bret Bielema).

It's sometimes hard to recognize the game he loves with all the shifting conference allegiances as schools jump to try and land in the most desirable super conference, geography and tradition be damned.

"I'm not a fan of all the conference realignment," Fry says. "It doesn't always seem like there's a lot of thought behind it.

"But the people who make those decisions are usually most concerned with making more money. I know revenues are important, and they'll always make money, but I'd like to see more thought put into the idea of staying together.

"Schools that are already in a great conference almost feel left out if they didn't get to move as well."

The Desire Test

Coaching and what makes a good one is an easier process for Fry to understand. He built his coaching tree and his success at Iowa with the help of one cardinal rule.

"I never hired an assistant coach who didn't want to become a head coach," Fry says. "If I knew they wanted to be a head coach, I knew they'd be ambitious and they'd work hard for me."

In a world as cutthroat as major college coaching, a content coach is often the one who ends up getting beat on the recruiting trail.

As for Stoops? He never was content. Didn't even know the meaning of the word.

"He's the only player I ever had who'd assign himself to run the stadium steps," Fry says of a punishment coaches typically handed out. "He'd run up and down those things all day. Bob Stoops was always intense.

"He thought like a coach when he was a player. Oh course, I had his brothers too. Those Stoops were raised to be coaches."

Fry always looked at things a little less traditionally himself. He loved trick plays. Still does when he's watching multiple games in three big screen TV room he has set up in his house in Mesquite, Nevada, a golf and gaming town about 90 miles from Las Vegas.

He majored in psychology at Baylor and he used that background to get every advantage he could, some subtle, some bubble gum pink. That's what color Fry infamously had the walls of the visitors locker room at Iowa Stadium painted, reasoning that pink tended to bring out more passive responses.

Or at least, that's how he spun the story at the time.

"Any time the other team spent talking or thinking about the pink locker room was a little less time they concentrated on us," Fry says now.

He laughs. Sometimes a trick is just a trick.

As he approaches his 83rd birthday, Fry knows that staying healthy requires a more pragmatic approach. He likes that he's about to receive an award that benefits the American Heart Association.

"You don't have to be as old as me to know a lot of people who've been affected by heart disease," he says. "People need to take more steps to stay healthy and fight."

There's that Texas coming through. Fry's always appreciated a fighter, whether it's Bob Stoops or Robert Griffin III.

"I wouldn't mind coaching him for a game," Fry says of RG3, the Heisman Trophy winner headed for the NFL. "We could design some plays for him. That might bring me back."