The world of sports lost two American originals yesterday with the passing of legendary Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt and longtime NFL defensive guru Buddy Ryan. They were great not simply because their teams won. They were great because they were different.

When Pat Summitt became the basketball coach at Tennessee in 1974, the sport wasn’t at the summit. It barely was in the newspaper. She was paid $250 a month and had to wash the team uniforms as part of her duties. She was not a legend then.

What she built in 38 years was not just a dynasty. She built a sport. Her record of 1,098-208 is astounding, her eight national titles remarkable. But they were not why the sports world mourned her yesterday.

Her impact was that she made us watch. She made us watch her players and the sport they played with a new eye. She coached with fire and made it OK for young women to play that way. She made clear to them if they wanted to spend their time in gyms, they could do it, but only if they brought a work ethic and a love she’d learned on a dusty farm in East Nowhere, Tennessee.

Such was the state of women’s athletics at the time that her family had to move to another county to find a high school where she could play basketball. By the time she was done, she’d become an All-American and won the silver medal as captain of the United States’ first Olympic women’s basketball team. Eight years later, she would return to the Olympics, coaching the 1984 gold medal winners. That was Pat Summitt. She finished the job.

Her work ended prematurely when she was diagnosed with early onset dementia in 2011. It slowly stole her memory and finally her life. But we do not forget pioneers in this country because we were built by them. Pat Summitt was one for several generations of female athletes.

She grew up without the benefits of Title IX but had much to do with its creation. That women now play collegiate athletics as fervently as men is not all her doing, but you can bet her cold, hard stare was trained on more than a few athletic administrators and congressmen through the years, forcing them to do what she demanded of her players: the right thing again and again until you win. In the end, she did.

Ryan was a different sort of trailblazer. He was a genius who created what might have been the most significant defensive system of his time. They called it the “46” after bone-crushing safety Doug Plank, who wore that number and whose fervent wish was to stick it into your chest until you quit.

More than a few people did, and that was Ryan’s aim. He didn’t just want to beat you, he wanted to break you. He did it with a hyper-aggressive formation that overwhelmed the NFL, first with the Chicago Bears and later with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Ryan was a head coach in both places but only had the title in one. In Philadelphia, he ran the team. In Chicago, he ran the defense, but it was not Mike Ditka’s defense. That defense belonged to Buddy, a fact never more evident than after winning Super Bowl XX, when both coaches were carried off the field. When’s the last time you saw an assistant coach carried off the field?

It was on the 12th.

The 12th of Never.

His philosophy was simple, but the system was not. It massed eight players near the line and attacked, overwhelming the opposition with numbers and savagery.

“Attack, attack, attack,” Ryan once said to me in Philadelphia when asked to describe his system. Asked to elaborate, he smiled slyly and said, “Attack some more.”

It wasn’t that simple because if so, it would not have been effective for more than a decade. Fads don’t last in the NFL. Innovations do, which is why Ryan was offended when it was suggested the “46” was simply putting eight-men on the line.

“Some say the 46 is just an eight-man front,” he said. “That’s like saying Marilyn Monroe is just a girl.”

Ryan was an assistant coach who never thought of himself that way. He was as subtle as the “46” and just as aggressive. He attacked offenses the way Pat Summitt attacked doubters and those who tried to marginalize women’s basketball. They both made the other side give in.

Few will ever forget the 1985 Bears, who many feel had the best defense in history. It led the league in mayhem, forcing 54 turnovers and ranking No.  1 in seven defensive categories. In Super Bowl XX, it buried the Patriots under an avalanche of seven sacks and ruthless run-stoppers who allowed only 7 yards.

Pat Summitt and Buddy Ryan were different in many ways but similar in this: They changed how their sports were played and viewed by the world.