[3] Born and raised in Guin, Alabama, Riley was a four-sport athlete in high school and played football, basketball, and baseball at Howard College (now Samford University).
Just days after earning his degree, Riley was the head coach of baseball and basketball at Coffee High School in Florence.
[4] One of his players at Coffee was Wimp Sanderson, a future assistant under Riley at Alabama and later the Tide's head coach.
He had an unbelievable talent of remembering anybody's name and from his stent in the Navy knew people all over the nation which helped in the recruiting and assistant basketball coach under Eugene Lambert.
[6] In 1970, he succeeded Joe Sewell as head baseball coach for ten seasons and stepped down for health reasons in 1979.
[18] Nephew Mike (b.1953) played football at Alabama as a reserve defensive back in the early 1970s while Hayden was the head baseball coach.