Magnanimitas.
It didn't take Bill Curry long to be intrigued by that word during his two-year stint overseeing Baylor School's leadership program from 2006 to 2008.
"It's the last thing you see as you leave the campus," Curry said from his head football coach's office at Georgia State University last Monday. "It's etched in stone at the front gate. It's Latin for 'greatness of spirit.' Every human being has it. Every human being has the responsibility to locate it."
When Curry's Panthers kick off their inaugural college football season 11 days from today against Shorter inside the Georgia Dome, the debate will begin anew over where to locate the former Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky coach in the annals of Southern football.
Will his efforts mirror his 1989 SEC championship season at Alabama? Will he display the recruiting prowess that led the final classes he signed at both Georgia Tech and Bama to eventually win national titles, though he was no longer around to celebrate them?
Or will his coaching swan song at GSU more closely resemble his Kentucky resume, which included one bowl bid but no winning seasons during six years in the Bluegrass?
"Bill Curry's always been a good football coach," said former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director Steve Sloan, also the Alabama AD during Curry's three seasons with the Crimson Tide. "He just hasn't always been in the best situations to win."
But whatever happens on the field this autumn and beyond within the Big Peach, no one should question Curry's greatness of spirit two months shy of his 68th birthday.
"Until I talked to Coach Curry, I wasn't sure that football was really for me anymore," said Panthers junior center Ben Jacoby, a Buford, Ga., resident who transferred home from Ball State. "He doesn't just care about us as players, but as men."
Added tight end Bailey Woods from Marietta, who started out at Auburn: "It's just more fun here. I've already become closer friends with these guys than I ever felt at Auburn. Everybody's coming together for a common purpose here. There aren't any agendas. It's really a tight-knit group, and Coach Curry deserves a lot of credit for that."
Even his former administrative assistant at Baylor has noticed a change in Curry as he prepares to tether himself to a set of headphones for the first time in 14 years.
"I went down last Christmas to have him autograph a few copies of his book, 'Ten Men You Meet in the Huddle,'" Susan Collins said. "He looked 10 years younger."
Curry will tell you his anti-aging formula is derived from "working hands on with young people again. When I was working for ESPN, I always felt guilty, like I should be doing more, contributing more. I've loved every minute of getting back into coaching."
Perhaps not every minute. As Curry told the Washington Post last week, he hadn't been on the job two weeks when he realized there was no practice field and one would have to be rented.
A field has since been built, but there still is no permanent locker room, though one is under construction.
"I could sit in my locker at Auburn," Bailey said. "It was nice and big. Mahogany wood, I think. We just have basic, metal lockers here."
Yet Curry appeared worried about none of that as he sat in his office filled with photos of his Super Bowl-winning seasons at Green Bay and Baltimore as an NFL player, his collegiate coaching seasons and his time at Baylor with young people such as Tiffany Williams, who recently sent him a portrait of Socrates she had done in an art class at Southern Cal.
"I'll never forget my first day teaching the leadership course at Baylor," Curry said. "I was really into my talk when a young lady raised her hand. 'Excuse me,' she said. 'Who are you?' All of us need that periodically."
Yet despite his enthusiasm for Baylor, Collins also remembers Curry quickly telling her, "'If anyone asks me to play or coach again, I'm taking it.' I knew then he wouldn't be here long."
And sure enough, on June 12, 2008, Curry took over a program that hadn't existed until two months before that and wouldn't play its first game for more than two years thereafter.
"There'd been some feelers out there before, but they were always outside the South," said Curry, who long has split his residence between the family getaway in Murphy, N.C., and the condo he shares in Buckhead with wife Carolyn.
"My wife would always say, 'That sounds great and I'll miss you.' When Georgia State called, she said, 'This is perfect. You get to do what you love and I don't have to move.'"
For those who believe players' attitudes have moved in the wrong direction since he last coached UK in 1996, Curry said, "The kids haven't changed; the parents have changed. I've got kids out here who can't make our 90-man roster whose parents think they should be a first-round NFL draft choice. They say the definition of a teenager is an insane person with car keys, but it's some of the parents who have gone a little nuts."
Some might say Curry was a little nuts to end GSU's first season at defending national champ Alabama.
"I called our president, Dr. Mark Becker," Curry said. "He asked me one question: 'If it doesn't go well, do you know what you'll say to the guys?' I thought for a minute and said, 'My first day with the Green Bay Packers, (linebacker) Ray Nitschke came across the line, hit me in the head and broke my facemask, my nose and knocked me out. When I came to I had to make sure this was what I wanted to do. Certain that it was, I decided to get better every day until that didn't happen anymore. And that's what I'll tell them, if necessary.'"
Now that's magnanimitas.