Inside a lobby of a downtown Tuscaloosa hotel, the shrill of a phone ring echoes.

A man answers the call. As he's chatting, he raises his hands, and on one of them is a big, diamond-encrusted gold ring. Inscribed on its face is, "New England...A.F.C. Champions."

Seconds later, the conversation nears its end and before hanging up, he grunts, "Roll damn Tide."

He smiles and looks up with those same blue eyes he once used to stare through players.

"I have met so many great people," he says. "And they didn't have to do anything. But they did. And that's why I am where I am, and that's why I have had the little bit of success I've had. That's the reason."

For almost an hour, people walk by Bear Bryant's successor and pay no mind to a person responsible for growing one of football's greatest coaching trees -- one with branches so long it resembles a Southern Live Oak and leads back to the very town where he is on this day.

It's been 31 years since Ray Perkins last walked the sideline at Bryant-Denny Stadium. A generation has passed since his unexceptional four-year tenure at Alabama ended with 32 wins, 15 losses, one tie and three forgettable bowl trips.

Perkins, 75, was one of the faces of the program's dark age that elapsed in the shadow of Bryant's retirement and death. Yet his legacy, which can't be quantified by a rather modest career coaching record, is rich. Improbable as it may seem, Perkins is the living, breathing bridge between the legendary Bear and Nick Saban, the modern-day king of college football. It wasn't supposed to work out this neatly, and few could have foreseen Perkins leaving a lasting mark on Alabama after doing so little to distinguish himself when he was in charge of the program.

"I would definitely say that would have been a difficult prediction to make [back then]," said Alabama radio analyst Phil Savage. "But now that that linkage is sort of out there in some ways, it makes a lot of sense. In this case, it's gone full circle from Ray Perkins to the mid-'80s to where we are now in 2017."

That became even more apparent this offseason when Saban hired his new offensive coordinator, Brian Daboll. Daboll presided over the tight ends in New England, where the framework of a system Perkins helped develop is still used to this day.

Last week, Daboll's former boss, the Patriots' Bill Belichick, explained the foundation of "all of the terminology that we use today" was laid, in part, by Perkins.

"Ray had a huge influence on my life and my career," Belichick says. "I learned a lot from Coach Perkins."

As head coach of the New York Giants, Perkins also gave Belichick his first major professional opportunity, taking old friend Ernie Adams's advice and hiring the future Hall of Famer in 1979 to oversee the franchise's special teams.

On the outskirts of the Big Apple decades ago, Belichick worked alongside Bill Parcells and Romeo Crennel -- two coaches recommended to Perkins by former Tide quarterback Steve Sloan.

Together, they served as assistants on Perkins' staff, teaching a no-nonsense, rugged brand of football they felt would spur a culture transformation within a proud organization that had fallen on hard times. Belichick remembers Perkins, a former Alabama and Baltimore Colts receiver, as "hard-nosed."

"A real grinder," he adds.

"Having the Coach Bryant influence certainly was apparent. Philosophically, we were very compatible," Parcells tells AL.com. "Ray was tough but fair."

Perkins relished the challenge he had in New York. In 1981, with Parcells as his defensive coordinator, he guided the Giants to the playoffs for the first time in 18 years. Life was good for the Petal, Miss. native making his way in the nation's biggest media market. Perkins proclaimed he had the "best job" in football and was content working for the Mara family that owned the team since its inception in 1925. But at a cocktail party with reporters one summer evening, Newark Star-Ledger beat writer Dave Klein planted a seed in Perkins' head.

Sidling up to Perkins, he said, "Let me ask you a question. What if Coach Bryant decided it was time for him to hang it up in Tuscaloosa?"

Alabama spring football-Coach Ray Perkins who is working with the Tide Quarterbacks this year, has some advice for Quarterback Gene Newberry #7.

Perkins didn't hesitate.

"Dave, I would walk to Tuscaloosa," Perkins responded. "I would walk to Tuscaloosa for that opportunity.'"

In December 1982, he got the call to come back to the Capstone. Bryant was stepping down and Perkins had been picked to succeed him. Back in the Meadowlands, the Giants chose Parcells to replace Perkins, setting in motion a domino effect of significant coaching moves that would reverberate all the way back to Tuscaloosa many, many years later.

Parcells would eventually appoint Belichick as his defensive coordinator. Then, on the heels of the second of two Super Bowls they won together, Belichick went to Cleveland for his first head-coaching job. Among his first hires in 1991 was a 39-year-old named Nick Saban. Another person Belichick considered adding to his staff before choosing a different candidate? Ray Perkins.

***

"Six-82-dig," Perkins says, reciting the name of an old play.

The first number signifies the formation and the second the offensive line protection. The last verbal cue describes the route being dialed up for the receivers.

"You didn't have to listen to the whole call," says former Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak. "You knew what you were listening to. It simplified things for each individual group, I think."

And clarity is at the heart of the Erhardt-Perkins system, which was developed by Perkins and Ron Erhardt when both were assistants under New England coach Chuck Fairbanks in the 1970s. Because it is based on concepts for each side of the field, it allows teams to thread together core elements throughout a game plan but disguise them effectively with a slew of formations and personnel groupings.

"It's not overly wordy," says Parcells, who would hire Perkins as his offensive coordinator in New England in 1993. "It has a numerical base and some words off that. It's really -- I think -- a very simplistic way to create flexibility and that's the best thing I can say."

Savage, the former Tide graduate assistant who worked for Belichick in Cleveland, describes the offense as elastic -- giving coaches the wherewithal to fatten and contract the playbook from week to week while interchanging players to create the most advantageous mismatches.

"It gets a lot of guys involved in terms of substitution patterns," he says. "You could expand as much as you want or condense it down as much as you want."

Perkins and Erhardt initially designed the system with the intent of using the run to set up the pass with play-action strikes. Tight ends and running backs were key components, helping to move the ball in the harsh conditions in New York and New England. Over time, the offense has been adapted to the shotgun-heavy, fast-break style that is now commonplace in football. In recent years, Alabama has embraced this highfalutin brand of football. But with Daboll's arrival there is a sense in Tuscaloosa that Alabama may get back to its roots.

"I think there is a possibility we may see more emphasis on more of a traditional style of passing attack," Savage says.

Daboll wouldn't give any real clues when he met with the media earlier this month. But back in 2012, when he was the offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs under Crennel, Daboll promised to deploy a lot of different personnel groups and cycle through a number of formations in the same way Perkins once did.

"I don't know why I would take credit for that," Perkins says with a bewildered look on his face.

The notion seemed foreign to him so he changed the subject.

"You know, I met him," he continues, referring to Daboll. "I was up in the office a couple of months ago and and told him I was glad he was there. Still am."

***

During his only news conference with Alabama reporters, Daboll brought up an old axiom at the heart of Belichick's philosophy.

"Our mantra is 'Do your job,'" he said.

Mention those three words to Perkins and he smiles almost wistfully as if he is recalling an interaction with a former player.

"We're going to give you something to do, and work as diligently as you can to get that job done," Perkins says. "That's all we're asking. We're not asking you anything out of this world. We know you can do it so do it. That's it."

Alabama Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant celebrates the 1966 Orange Bowl Victory over Nebraska with two of his boys--Steve Sloan (left) and Ray Perkins

Soon after Perkins hired Belichick in 1979, he knew he had made the right move. Perkins sat in on a special teams meeting with his young assistant just to get a feel for how Belichick coached. At some point during the powwow, a player interrupted the confab with a stupid question.

Belichick bristled, saying that if something so obvious needed to be asked then he shouldn't be there in the first place.

"He didn't mind standing up to those players," Perkins says.

And Perkins loved that.

"I think Ray brought in guys who had toughness," Zolak says. "All these coaches had an edge to them. He brought in guys who don't take any shit."

Bill Parcells didn't. Neither did Belichick. And then there is Saban, who didn't work under Perkins but has the same bulldog mentality as those football icons who did.

For more than ten years, Saban has made clear he's the boss in this town, making Tuscaloosa his fiefdom. His image is on walls next to portraits of Bryant -- the man Perkins succeeded but never came close to equaling.

Perkins likens Saban to a CEO running a company, and it's an accurate description.

It's also an observation made from the outside.

Despite their many shared connections, the two never met before Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007 and have only talked briefly on occasion since then.

"But I have a lot of respect for him," Perkins says.

Perkins still goes to the games and follows the Tide. Yet as Saban has built his own dynasty in a similar fashion as Bryant did, Perkins hasn't given much thought to the indirect influence he has had on a program he stopped coaching way back in 1986.

"No," he says. "I will be honest with you. I haven't tried to put two and two together."

Instead, he has let others connect the dots. From Saban. To Belichick. To Parcells. To Perkins. And, yes, even back to Bryant.

At the center of this circle is the Coach Who Followed Bear, a man whose legacy is not defined by wins and losses but rather by the men he's worked around.

"I don't see how anybody can go through life and not look back with a lot of gratitude and a lot of happiness," Perkins says. "I've just had so many great opportunities. I have met so many great people."

And as it turns out he helped bring some of them together, sowing the seeds of a coaching tree that is still blooming in Tuscaloosa after all of these years.

Rainer Sabin is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin