Pat Dye’s ’80s whims just have a way of resurfacing.
Yesterday we learned that Coach offered Prince William a football scholarship, sight unseen, on the occasion of his birth in June 1982, a bit of trivia almost as ripe for fan fiction, comic strips, and fake Twitter accounts as The Pants and Harper Lee’s letters (It’s just so Dye.) It got some attention. FoxNews.com even had a link to the story on it’s front page this morning.
“How did this come up again?” Dye asked when I got him on the phone this morning. I told him — Tiger Roar Magazine. David Housel quotes.
He laughed.
“Well, at that time, David and myself and everybody else at Auburn was trying to do anything we could to get our name in the paper,” Dye said. “We were trying to rebuild a program. What better way to do that than have a member of the royal family on your team?”
So yes, the scholarship offer was a publicity stunt, but Dye swears he would have honored it.
“How could you not?” Dye laughed. “I imagine he would have made a pretty good alumni for the university, too. I was a big fan of his mama.”
When asked what position the prince would have played, Dye didn’t hesitate.
“He looks like a split end to me.”
…
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