Ben Zaranka was 17 when he first met Bear Bryant. It was 1947. Bryant, then the head coach at Kentucky, was in Zaranka's East Chicago home, recruiting the All-State offensive lineman. In his recruiting pitch, Bryant hid nothing about his demanding coaching style.

"He was very honest and up front," Zaranka said. "He said, 'Come play for me and you're going to suffer. It won't be easy. But I'll make a player out of you.' "

Times have changed

The demanding spring practices of Bear Bryant some 50-plus years ago are a distant memory compared to what goes on during off-season workouts today. Increasing concerns over safety and competitive advantages have led the NCAA to limit spring workouts to 15 practices, three of which cannot include physical contact. Much like Bryant, coaches today still view spring workouts as critical to developing a team's fundamentals, but fans primarily focus on the spring game. Nothing more than a glorified scrimmage, the spring game is used by many schools to raise money for scholarship funds, school improvements and football-related expenses. For the most part, the game itself carries very little weight in determining the depth chart come fall. "We've gotten to the point now where it's evolved into the entertainment business," said Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer, who lets his assistants coach the yearly ritual. "More than anything else, it's a PR tool." Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, who at one time had to beg people to attend the Wildcats spring games, now has a hard time understanding its high level of interest. "People are worried about China and poverty and the economy and the stock market plummeting and yet we still have time to go out and see kids run into each other," Snyder said. "I guess everybody needs to quench that football fix. You need that shot in the arm again." -- Wayne Drehs

And in no season did Bryant spend more time living up to those promises than the spring. While a handful of other schools dabbed in the notion of off-season workouts and practices, Bryant saw his team's spring workouts as critical its success.

With no NCAA regulations on spring practices, Bryant often drilled his team for months on end. In the rain, in the snow, it didn't matter. You practiced until you got it right. Even two-a-days were commonplace.

"He didn't know there was an end to anything," said Zaranka, who will turn 73 in May. "We'd just keep going and going. I don't even think we got Saturdays off. It was brutal."

It was also a far cry from the current state of spring football. Increasing concerns over safety and competitive advantages have led the NCAA to regulate off-season workouts, limiting spring workouts to 15 practices, three of which cannot include physical contact.

Though there are countless theories on how and when spring football actually evolved (Cal played intercollegiate spring games in the late 1800s), most point to Bear Bryant and his days at Kentucky as the foundation for what we see today.

His ways of manipulating the few rules so the workouts could best benefit the program were the stuff of legend.

"There are many people in college football who believe the NCAA college rulebook was written to police Bear Bryant," said Bill Curry, who followed Bryant at Alabama and also coached at Kentucky. "And spring football was just another example of that."

Russell Rice, formerly the sports information director at Kentucky, was a student in 1946, Bryant's first year at the school. Rice remembers the new head coach using spring practice as tryouts, trucking in as many kids as he could from the local steam mills to butt heads with the varsity. A lack of scholarship limitations helped Bryant keep anybody he wanted.

"Bear would get right into the trenches and do everything he could to run these kids off," Rice remembers. "If you survived, that was great. You were then on the team. If not, you went home."

	“	(Bear Bryant) was a guy who always had his eye out. If he saw somebody doing something different with merit, he'd copy it and try to do it better himself. It was like stealing candy from a baby. And he'd play with all that stuff in the spring. ”
		— George "Chink" Sengel, former player

Spring practice wasn't only for Bryant's players. He used it to tinker with new formations and plays as well. Buffalo Bills scout George "Chink" Sengel, who played for Bryant in 1946-47 and was later an assistant at Kentucky, said spring football was Bryant's time to pretend he was a mad scientist toying with formulas in his football laboratory.

"He was a guy who always had his eye out," said Sengel. "If he saw somebody doing something different with merit, he'd copy it and try to do it better himself. It was like stealing candy from a baby. And he'd play with all that stuff in the spring."

While Bryant may have borrowed certain formations or plays, other coaches tried to copy Bryant's tenacious spring practice regimen. They had little choice.

"It could have all started with him, but he wasn't the only one who worked his guys hard in the off-season," said Grant Teaff, president of the American Football Coaches Association who played at McMurry College in Texas. "It was a generation where coaches thought less of a man if they thought about getting drink of water.

"It was a wonder they didn't kill all of us."

One opposing coach who had difficulty keeping up with the off-season ways of Bryant was Ole Miss' Johnny Vaught, who beat Bryant 14-7 in his first game as Rebels coach in 1947. But Vaught was never fond of the all-you-can-handle format of spring football in the mid-1940s.

When the NCAA first regulated spring practice in 1954, limiting the number of workouts to 20 sessions in 36 calendar days, Vaught, who coached at Ole Miss until 1970, was relieved.

"It got to the point where it was almost year-round practice," Vaught said. "There wasn't much of a choice if you wanted to stay competitive.

"After awhile, football got boring to the coaches and players. There were other things we all wanted to do like hunt and fish, maybe play golf. But we couldn't."

It showed others just how committed Bryant was. Zaranka remembers the first time he truly understood Bryant's inner desire to win. It was the spring of 1947 and Bryant was tired of his practices running so late that it was too dark for his players too see.

He read in the local paper that a nearby American Legion field was installing new lights to its field, so Bryant asked about acquiring the old lights.

"They were these old-time lights, these huge things that were probably four or five feet across," Zaranka remembers. "He talked the Legion into donating them to us."

Bryant installed the lights atop an 8-foot wall that lined the practice field. The benefit was that the players could now see themselves. The negative was that receivers had a horrendous time seeing the ball in the glare.

"He didn't care," Zaranka said. "All he knew was that this meant more practice. We'd be out there later and later, which we didn't like too much. But it didn't matter to him. He had just found another way to take advantage of a situation so we could improve."

And after all, that was Bryant's point all along.

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at wayne.drehs@espn.com.