Y'know. I've gotta admit that I absolutely LOVE having a coach that is so completely dedicated to this football team that he forgets his own anniversary. In the presser after practice he seemed a lil hellbent. So when he's in the doghouse at home, you better believe the players are feeling the impact of it. Focus, my friends.
Shoulda gotten married after spring practice, Coach. Haha.
2. Steelers beat the Packers
Wow. I can't even begin to describe this game. Normally, I hate ping pong matches, but this was just downright entertaining. Two of the best QBs in the league flingin it around, and Big Ben hit Mike Wallace for the big play with no time left on the clock to win. Now THAT's what December football in the NFL is supposed to be about.
3. Alabama basketball ain't there yet
Not yet. Kansas St was tougher, bigger, and just all around better. They scrapped and fought and hit their shots, and made us work harder for ours, etc. They outplayed the Tide in every aspect of the game. Just goes to show that Coach Grant and this team have a long way to go before we'll be back to the Big Dance.
4. Back to practice
First, congratulations for everyone, then it's back to reality for the Tide football team. The game is getting ever closer, and the players realize it's time to get back into gear. Mike Johnson and Greg McElroy both feel like everybody's hungry and ready to win a national championship. I'm feelin good about it right now.
5. Players beginning to file early
The first player that we've heard that has filed to see his NFL Draft status is Kareem Jackson, and, according to nfldraftscout.com, he's projected to be a 2nd or 3rd round pick. Honestly, it might not be a bad time to go, y'know? If he can be drafted that high, and if we win a national title, going out on top would be the best way to do it. Of course, that'd put us in a hole in the secondary big time. 4 of our top 5 DBs would be leaving after this season. We'll see how it plays out. For now, let's hope they're all staying focused.
¶ 9:58 AM1 commentslinks to this post
I'm so ready for Christmas to get here. I've got all my shopping done. Now I'm just waiting.
I even bought myself a present. UFC Undisputed for PS3. Diggit. Should be in the mail soon. Haha.
1. Bama basketball handles Samford
Mr. Green led Bama to a 60-45 win over Samford last night in a game that felt more like a scrimmage than a real game. Everyone mainly worked on fundamentals and shooting the ball well. It worked perfectly. Lots of minutes for everyone. Good game to help build up to Saturday's game in Mobile against Kansas St.
2. Irvin takes Memphis running backs job
Sedrick Irvin, an assistant running backs coach at UA who joined Saban's staff after last season, has taken the position of Running Backs coach at the University of Memphis. Sedrick was one of those that Mark Ingram thanked in his Heisman speech. We're happy for him to get this opportunity. Looks like Larry Porter is going after winners for his staff. Read more here.
3. Chris Henry from the Bengals has died
Sad day in the NFL. Chris Henry, from Cincinnati, has died after a domestic disturbance yesterday. Apparently his wife raced off in a pick-up truck, but he had jumped in the back of the truck. When the incident escalated, he somehow fell out of the back of the truck, suffering serious injuries which ultimately led to his death this morning. Sucks.
4. Conference re-alignments?
The Big 10 wants to add a 12th member. Candidates are currently a few teams from the Big East or the Big 12. Iowa St is a good fit, but so are Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Cincinnati. If I had to wager, I'd bet on Louisville, because the Big 10 would like to move into the Kentucky market that the SEC has had a hold on for a while. If they were to bring in the others, exactly what would be the point. You're looking to expand your market, right? It'd be like if the SEC brought in Memphis. They've already got a stranglehold on the market. It doesn't make any sense. I'm guessing they take Louisville, and then the Big East take Memphis. Just a guess.
Awww yeah. It's been a good few weeks in Bama land. It feels like I'm in a dream or something.
1. Mark Ingram was on the Dan Patrick Show
Good job, Mark. Here's the link to the interview. He's such a well-spoken genuine young man. It's refreshing to have a kid like him representing the University.
2. Turner Gill is in at Kansas
I can't believe I haven't talked about this yet. Does Turner Gill turn Kansas back around into competing for Big 12 titles? Somehow, I doubt it. I honestly think that Mangino is a better x's and o's coach, but I think Gill will get the players that Mangino couldn't get. Regardless, it'll definitely be interesting to watch. I think he'll have them at 6-6 or 7-5 every year with a bowl game, but nothing too big.
Georgia can't find one to save their lives, or so it seems. From what I'm hearing, they've talked to a LOT of guys, and none of them have been really interested. Bud Foster is the only official that I've heard, but I've also heard Kirby Smart, Tyrone Nix, and Vic Koenning, and none of them are even the slightest bit intrigued. Word is that nobody wants to jump on board a sinking ship, which is pretty much what Georgia is viewed as right now.
5. Alabama led the country with 6 first team AP All-Americans
Wow. That's a crazy number, right? 6 first teamers. Incredible accomplishment. Mark Ingram was a unanimous selection. Also on the first team were Mike Johnson, Leigh Tiffin, Rolo McClain, Terrence Cody, and Javier Arenas. Mark Barron earned third-team. Diggit.
¶ 9:50 AM0 commentslinks to this post
I've been following this Tennessee recruiting stuff over the past couple of days, and when the picture came out with the two so-called "hostesses" at the game with the two recruits, holding that sign up, I realized that I recognized the girl. I had seen her in recruiting pics before.
"Bryce Brown's girlfriend Lacy Earps is a Jr. at UT, and would love nothing more than to watch her boyfriend play on Saturday's without having to fly to Miami or Oregon. How serious this "romance" is I can't say, but if her Facebook profile picture is any indication of how interwoven this romance is, Brown may be running through the "T" this fall.
Lacey + Bryce = Bracey? This relationship must be serious, right?..."
"But how serious can girlfriends be? Just ask David Oku, who moved to Nebraska to be with his girlfriend. The verdict on that case still remains to be seen.
So, whatever your opinion is on the matter, it's fun to speculate what could possibly be in the works.
I for one believe Bryce Brown will be a Vol for a number of reasons. He know's he'll have a chance to play immediately, and will embrace the opportunity to showcase his talent in front of 107,000 + fans. Not to mention the television exposure he'll have throughout the season. Oh, and of course having his lady on campus can't hurt either."
Ok, first off, she's the captain of Orange Pride, which is the group of chicks that host recruits on campus. Next, while Bryce Brown was a senior in high school, his supposed girlfriend was a Junior at UT? Explain this one to me. A 21-year old white upper class trash chick, that lives in Knoxville, TN, dating a 17 or 18 year old black high school senior from Kansas, who just happens to be the #1 recruit in the country. Who, magically, after months of narrowing schools down to Miami, Oregon, and Kansas St, decides to go play for Tennessee. Pretty much out of nowhere. Hmmm. Smell somethin fishy yet?
So, she's out checking out other recruits, 200 miles away from campus, while her boyfriend, Bryce, is chillin at home in Knoxvegas, right? I'd be very interested to find out who paid for those hotel rooms.
Now, excuse me if I'm wrong here, but the argument that a lot of fans are making by saying that she is not a representative of the school, and didn't realize what she was doing, doesn't really hold up well when there are pictures of her on the field at UT football games. I would assume anyone allowed on the field would be given credentials by either the University or the coaching staff, right? Players families and/or girlfriends are not just allowed on the field. Something REALLY stinks here.
I'm totally jumping to conclusions, but I can do that because I'm just a blogger. It really looks like Tennessee is running a brothel. Check out the comments by Keith Easterwood, a Memphis basketball AAU guy that just so happened to have a son that was a fairly high level recruit last year. These appeared in yesterday's New York Times article.
"Also on Friday, Keith Easterwood, a veteran summer basketball coach, said that on a visit last year with his son, a football recruit, he had to ask a hostess to stop brushing her breasts against both him and his son.
He recalled saying, “Young lady, if you don’t stop doing that, we’ve got a problem.”
Easterwood said that he took a group of basketball players to a Western Kentucky football game at Tennessee this year, and that the presence of the hostesses had his players “literally reduced to blubbering idiots.”
“I’ve been up there five times, four for football and one basketball visit,” Easterwood said. “My observation is that this is a very organized operation. These girls have obviously been groomed. There’s a lot of eye contact and touching.”
I gotta admit. I'm having a damn blast with this stuff. I'm sure a ton more will come out of this. We'll have to just watch and see.
Oh yeah. StiffArmTrophy.com, who has correctly predicted the last 7 heisman winners, and their margin of victory, etc, is predicting that Mark Ingram will win tonight in a close race. So tune in at 7pm CST on ESPN. Should be interesting. Immediately following that, change it over to ESPN2 and watch Anthony Grant's Tide Basketball team take on #5 Purdue. Should be a helluva game.
¶ 1:16 PM0 commentslinks to this post
That's the SEC graduation rate, which, as you can see, has Alabama at #3 in the conference behind Vanderbilt and Florida. Tennessee is now tied for #12, also known as DEAD FREAKING LAST in the conference, along with Arkansas.
Had he done even a little bit of research, he would have realized that the University of Tennessee doesn't even begin classes until Wed, Jan 13th for the 2010 spring semester. Final exams are taken from May 4th through May 11th. That information can be found at this location - http://registrar.tennessee.edu/academic_calendar/0910_acad_cal.shtml.
Meanwhile, The University of Alabama begins classes on Tues, Jan 5th for the 2010 spring semester, according to http://registrar.ua.edu/calendar/spring_2010.html. Final exams are taken from May 3rd through May 7th. So they're missing 3 days of classes, which, in reality, would only be one to two classes at the most for ALL students, while UT doesn't even begin their classes until 9 days later.
Wow. That was definitely unexpected. Jenn Brown looked great, as usual. All the more reason to believe that Erin Andrews will soon be out of a job. Haha. Who would you put your money on as the sideline reporter for the National Championship game?
1. Alabama almost completely shutout at ESPN Award Show...
#1 in the country. #1 defense. Heisman finalist. And we get one award? Rolando McClain won the Butkus. That's it. Wow. Talk about some more motivation that Saban can throw at the team, as if they needed anymore. Still no respect. Colt McCoy, Texas QB, won the Walter Camp, Maxwell, Davey O'Brien, and the Johnny Unitas award. Suh won 4 awards as well. Brian Kelly won Coach of the Year, Gerhart won the Doak Walker award, and Kai Forbath from UCLA won the Lou Groza. Yup.
2. Hey, Gambling advocates... STFU!
Talk about ridiculous. The governors do this crap every year. And yet, now that Alabama has won, and the people in the state that are advocates for the electronic bingo halls have a lil bit of ammunition, they're making a story of out of something that doesn't matter. Gov. Riley - take the damn oranges.
3. College Football playoffs --
More ridiculousness this morning. CBSSports.com has drawn up a 64-team football playoff. Yeah. 64 teams. You can vote for who you think would win each matchup by clicking the link above. Bama is the #1 overall seed, facing what would appear to be the #64 team - Florida St. Good opening matchup, for a fairy tale, anyway.
4. Brian Kelly is officially the new Notre Dame coach
Kelly is the guy. Count me as one of the many that believes he will be able to win there for a long time. Of course, I also thought Rich Rod would be a winner at Michigan. Shows how much I know. This hiring just seems to fit really well. Like, reeeally well. Kelly is Irish Catholic, and a guy that's always lingered around the midwest for his entire coaching career. If he can't recruit to Notre Dame, after what he was able to do at Central Michigan and Cinci, then it's only because Notre Dame just absolutely is not what it used to be. Kelly develops talent with the best of them. I would expect a quick turnaround because there definitely is talent on that roster.
5. Memphis hires Mike DuBose
FootballScoop.com has learned that Memphis has hired Mike DuBose as their defensive line coach. Interesting fit there. Talk about a fall. Alabama head coach to high school coach, to Milsaps head coach, to Memphis defensive line coach. Man. We all wish him well though. In the end, he is still one of Bear's boys.
¶ 10:24 AM0 commentslinks to this post
"There’s no truth to the rumor that ... The janitors around the Alabama practice facilities have had to work overtime mopping up all of Terrence Cody’s drool after he watched games tapes of the Big 12 Championship.
Dimeday was yesterday. Had a good practice. We always seem to do things well on the day when we remember Dimebag Darrell. Word.
1. NCAA looking into Tennessee recruiting tactics
Lane. C'mon man. Read the damn rule book. The New York Times is reporting about the NCAA looking into your program for your use of hostesses. It doesn't go into a LOT of detail, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn some that some of the things that were going on were INCREDIBLY inappropriate. Does this bring up some memories of Colorado's recruiting tactics back a few years ago? Yikes.
2. Charlie Strong is Louisville's new coach
I'm curious how this is going to play out. The Big East is a big time offensive league. Will Strong's defenses live up to the billing and be able to stop the Cincis and West Virginias? This is a very interesting hire. Read more here.
3. Coaches leaving Tennessee...
Tennessee has already lost their running backs coach to Florida State and their wide receivers coach to LSU. Now I'm hearing they're losing Lance Thompson to Louisville. There will be others, from what I understand. This is a HUGE deal. If this goes through, they will have lost their recruiting connections to Florida, Louisiana, and the Mobile area all in a matter of days. We'll have to see what happens with this one. This could be big.
4. So Notre Dame has picked Brian Kelly...
I've heard some not-so-good things about Brian Kelly. I'd be a lil hesitant to make him my coach. Alas, ND didn't feel that way. Read more here.
5. Awards are everywhere...
I'll post a full list soon, but the Tide is racking up the awards this offseason. Coach Saban won the Amos Alonzo Stag award for best coach, Kirby Smart won the Frank Broyles award, McClain got the Butkus award, we had 10 players on the AP All-SEC team, we had the AP SEC Coach of the year and the Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year. And they keep coming in. Ingram may very well win the Heisman, and there's a ton of other awards coming up too. What a fun year. And it's not even close to being over yet.
¶ 12:06 PM0 commentslinks to this post
1. Finebaum tells us who else Saban should have thanked
Alabama fans should be thanking all sorts of people. Rich Rod, Tim Tebow, etc. Read the article here. There's a lot to be said for this because if Tebow does come to Alabama, Shula is still here, going 9-3 every year with no sniff of a championship. Take a look at Michigan and imagine how badly he would have done here at Alabama, where the defenses play MUCH faster than they do in the Big 10. There's just a ton of things to look back at, and, in the end, all has worked out to perfection.
2. Rolo wins the Butkus Award
It hasn't been "officially" announced yet, but Dick Butkus is in Tuscaloosa, which would only mean that Rolo has won the award. That's BIG news.
3. The University has canceled all classes from Jan 6th - Jan 8th
At Alabama we don't just play football. We live it. Well, if you wanted proof, how about an entire school canceling classes for 3 days for a game. I don't know that I've EVER seen this happen. I'm sure the national media will be all over this, probably negatively (because they hate us, of course), but I think it's a genious move by the University. This is the biggest thing that's happened to the state in 17 years.
4. Heisman Trophy talk
The two most well known Heisman Trophy sites (HeismanPundit.com and StiffArmTrophy.com) both currently have Mark Ingram as the leader at this point after doing a bunch of updates and trying to see how many people are voting for certain individuals. At this point, it appears that it's down to Toby Gerhart and Mark Ingram. I'll take that matchup.
5. Sports Illustrated again
Anybody down for one more Sports Illustrated cover? I'd like to get one more for the week after Jan 7th...
Ohhh yeah. I feel incredible. It's just been an unreal couple of days. I've gone back and watched the game 4 times all the way through already. Unbelievable.
1. Alabama vs Texas
It is officially time for some payback. We're 0-7-1 against Texas all time. That's right. We've never beaten the Longhorns. Time to cure that. Thursday, Jan 7th at 7pm on ABC.
2. Florida is tasting Sugar right now
And sugar never tasted so sour. That was us last year. So now you know how it feels. Kinda sucks for the Sugar Bowl. They've been relegated to a consolation prize for two straight years. I'm sure they can't WAIT until they get to host the championship game again. Haha.
3. Alabama opened as a 4 point favorite
Of course they did. Because we demolished what was supposed to be the best team in the country, and they needed a replay to put one second back on the clock to win by 1 point over a team that lost at home to Iowa State 9-7 a few weeks ago.
I've watched Texas a few times this year - against Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Nebraska. I feel reeeeally good about this matchup. If our defense shows up and doesn't come out lackadaisical, like they did against Auburn, then we can own this game the same way we owned the SEC Championship game. If we come out thinking we're better, not playing with a lil bit of a chip on our shoulder, then it will be another tight ballgame, or maybe even another Utah type of game. You don't want to get so far behind that it takes you out of your gameplan, or that it gives the other team enough confidence late in the ballgame to allow them to hang with you.
4. No "Andre Smith" moments this year...
We're about to play in the BCS National Championship game. Pray that nobody on this team is dumb enough, or selfish enough, to do what Smitty did last year. No funny business before this game. National Championships are hard enough to win with ALL of your players.
5. Heisman talk? Does it matter?
Does it really matter if Mark wins the Heisman Trophy this Saturday? In the past, the distractions have hurt QBs. What are we going to do if the distractions get to our running back? Easy - we'll put in Trent Richardson. Simple enough, right? It would be nice to actually have a Heisman, but at the same time, I don't want one. I want to give it to Colt, and then let us squash another Heisman winner. Already squashed Timmy Tebow. We squashed Gino back in '92. I wanna squash another one.
