Sunday, April 29, 2012

One year later ...

I had been thinking about this column for days, if not weeks, and still had no idea what I was going to write on the one-year anniversary of the April 27th tornado. Here goes:

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Surrounded by tributes and memorials, people in Tuscaloosa, and throughout most of Alabama, can’t help but experience the full spectrum of emotions today.

Tuscaloosa after the April 27 tornado.
Grief. Hope.
Sorrow. Resolve.
Pain. Pride.
The list goes on, as no one seems to know exactly what he or she is supposed to feel, just that they do. From what was lost to what we’ve gained, it’s all essentially beyond anyone’s comprehension, never mind simply how much everything has changed.
It’s April 27th, and on this date a year ago at approximately 5 p.m. the massive tornado ripped through the community and put a hole in everyone’s hearts – one that will continue to be felt for a long, long time.
To mark the anniversary, we do what we can: Remember and honor, but not relive. As for reminders, they’re really not needed because they remain a part of everyday life.
“Shock,” Crimson Tide men’s basketball coach Anthony Grant said about his initial reaction to the gut-wrenching damage that is still being cleaned up.
“You drive down two blocks and it’s like a bomb exploded.”


Nowhere is a better example of that contrast than Alberta City where the Winn-Dixie grocery store was left relatively unscathed, yet across the pavement the elementary school was completely obliterated.
The same can easily be found in Holt, where Project Team Up, the organization Nick and Terry Saban helped create, is helping redevelop a neighborhood. Six houses, some with yards full of flowers and children’s toys, appear to have been finished, with two more around the corner near completion. Yet in the middle of the block remains a crumbling structure that has yet to be cleared, and the house with the massive tree on top of it is still impossible to miss along the turn to the major road.
Today, Carson Tinker will attend the ceremony at Coleman Coliseum with the parents of Ashley Harrison, his girlfriend who died a year ago with 52 others in the area and more than 250 throughout the state. Although the university received scores of interview requests for the long-snapper, he’s politely declined them all because today isn’t about him.
Nor is it about any of his teammates like offensive lineman Barrett Jones, who attended a prayer breakfast along with Mayor Walt Maddox. When recently asked where he was when the tornado hit, the Outland Trophy winner called himself an idiot for being home and watching it on TV, even though he subsequently spent days yielding a chainsaw and helping out where he could.
“Yeah. My dad taught me well,” he said with a smirk. “I grew up on the land. I know how to use the appliances outside.”
Of course, both the football and gymnastics teams went on to win national championships, which they would gladly give up to avoid the catastrophe, but life doesn’t quite work that way. Tomorrow, Coleman Coliseum will host a victory celebration for Sarah Patterson’s sixth title, but today it's home to the memorial service.
“I think that deep down inside, even though we never really talked about it, never used it as a motivating factor as a team, every player on the team, every coach on the staff, myself included, in the back of our mind, deep down in our heart, really wanted to accomplish something of significance for our fans who were affected and our community that was affected by the tornado,” Nick Saban said. “It was, I think, really positive for them. I think the great memories that our team sort of created with the kind of season that we had probably created a lot of hope for a lot of people, a lot of positive thoughts and memories that they have and hopefully gave them some joy in our life.”
So how should we act on today of all days? Personally, I’m going to follow the lead of my friends Alex Perez and Kathryn Lo Porto, whom I wrote about last year. Some of you may remember they used to live behind Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and were home when the tornado completely destroyed their neighborhood.
They’re going back to where their home used to be -- and the American Flag photo accompanying this article was taken -- for essentially the first time since salvaging what they could and starting over. Construction vehicles line now the road where news trucks had parked in the storm’s aftermath, but otherwise there’s nothing else there any more; No trees, no buildings, just a bunch of overgrown weeds and a whole lot of memories.
There will be a lot of hugs and tears, but then the soon-to-be married couple will do what is fitting for them, and probably a lot of other survivors as well: Offer toast.
A toast that they’re alive.
A toast for having successfully endured the past year,
A toast for better tomorrows. 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Do you believe in signs?

Sunday I was covering the Alabama baseball game against Vanderbilt and decided to stick around for the arrival of the gymnastics squad from Duluth, Ga., where it won the national championship.

I swear I'm not making this up, just as the bus pulled up with a police escort, a smattering of rain came down even though the sun was still out. Sure enough, as they brought the trophy out to cheering fans a rainbow formed.

Just when you think you've seen everything ...

I ended up writing a column asking if this is the golden age of Alabama athletics, but it was the one from Saturday that got the most attention.

Here it is for those interested -- from BOL:



They couldn’t do it again, could they?
At Sewell-Thomas Stadium, the University of Alabama baseball team was down to its final out against Vanderbilt, with two men on, first baseman sophomore Austen Smith at the plate, and the Crimson Tide down a run. The last two conference games played there on Saturdays had ended the exact same way with electrifying walk-off home runs.
Meanwhile, a little later in Duluth, Ga., gymnastics’ Super Six would once again be decided on one final routine. Similar to a year ago, Alabama and Florida were going head-to-head on balance beam and floor exercise, only this time the roles were flip-flopped, with senior Ashley Priess, who sat out 2011 with an injury, in the crucial anchor spot on arguably the scariest apparatus in collegiate athletics.
The inside fastball shot off the bat and started to carry with the wind blowing out.
The final dismount sent Priess flipping into the air.
The ball cleared the wall just below the main scoreboard in left-center field.
The landing stuck.
The baseball team celebrated as if it had won the national championship.
The gymnastics team did because it just had, its second straight and sixth overall.
“I’m just so proud that they never gave up,” gymnastics coach Sarah Patterson told reporters in the back yard of her biggest rival, and now has as many national championships as the man who originally hired her, Paul W. “Bear” Bryant.
From softball winning at Georgia to men's golf taking a huge lead in the SEC Championships, there was magic surrounding the athletic program Saturday, just two days after President Barack Obama put on quarterback A.J. McCarron’s national championship ring while hosting the football team at the White House.
What other possible conclusion could there be?
For example, Smith came into the game batting .205, and his last home run was against Central Florida in last year’s NCAA Regional. He nearly didn’t play due to any injury sustained the night before when he made the baseball sin of sliding into first base and jammed his fingers and knuckles on the bag.
“He had to get X-Rays, his hand’s been swollen since last night,” Coach Mitch Gaspard said. “He swung the bat early and we kind of went with it.”
But three straight home walk-off home runs on Saturdays, even Gaspard said he’s never seen anything like that in 24 years of coaching. It’s even more remarkable considering the way this year’s team has played, 16-24 overall and 6-11, which even with two consecutive wins over the Commodores still has the Crimson Tide at the bottom of the league standings.
“I’m still in a little bit of shock right now,” Smith said. “I didn’t think it was going to get out. I thought it was going to bounce off the fence or something, so I was just running. Saw it go over, and just lost my mind.”
Meanwhile, the gymnastics team’s performance was nothing short of amazing. After opening with a 49.45 on floor exercise, it followed with a head-turning 49.625 on vault, which was the highest team score of the day even with UCLA’s Vanessa Zamarripa nailing a perfect 10.
To put it further into perspective, Florida’s 197.775 was the best runner-up score in NCAA Championships history, as the Gators placed second for the third straight year. Never before had a team with 197.7 or better failed to win the title, but on Saturday there were two as UCLA was a close third at 197.75.
Alabama’s 197.85 tied for the best score ever by a team not hosting the NCAA Meet (with Georgia 2007), and third overall behind UCLA in 2004 (198.125) and the Crimson Tide’s 198.025 in 1996. With Patterson’s other titles in 1988, 1991, 2002 and 2011, it’s her first back-to-back championships.
“That was an incredible performance by all the teams,” Patterson said. “I felt like because of the quality of teams, it was going to come down to the very end and that’s just happened.”
In both sports, though, just as important as the clutch performances were the ones by those setting them up.
In baseball, freshman starter Taylor Guilbeau gave up just one hit over six innings and had a career-high seven strikeouts. Down 6-4, senior third baseman James Tullidge started the winning rally with a leadoff single, and eventually scored on a sac-fly, and with two outs freshman right-fielder Ben Moore came back from being down 0-2 in the count to draw the walk to being up Smith.
“That never gets old,” Moore said of seeing yet another walk-off. “There’s something to it, I don’t know what it is.”
For the gymnastics team, senior Geralen Stack-Eaton earlier had a 9.975 on vault and a crucial 9.95 on floor. Kayla Williams and Marissa Gutierrez only completed in two events each, but made them count with straight 9.9s, and Kim Jacobs led off on beam with the same score.
“We just believed in ourselves on beam, and knew that we could do it,” said Stack-Eaton, who also notched a 9.9 after Sarah DeMeo’s bobble only ratcheted up the pressure.
Florida had gone into the final rotation with a very slim lead after Alabama struggled on the uneven bars, but was on floor where the scores had been relatively low al weekend. That didn’t change for the Gators, as Priess needed 9.875 to tie and a 9.9 to win.
The celebrating started before the judges posted the 9.95 score, tying her career best, and once again, the team that captured the SEC title won’t be getting national championship rings.
“It was just an amazing night,” Priess said. 

Friday, April 20, 2012

Whew ...

Ok, this week didn't go exactly the way I planned.

While wrapping up spring football, and making the transition to the closest thing we have to an offseason until mid-July, my top non-work goal was to finish the updates/rewrite of "100 Things Crimson Tide Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die."

I'm happy to report that it's done, and I'm very pleased with the outcome. Next step is my publishing house takes the original manuscript, inserts all the new stuff (which will take longer than they think because the print out of all my changes was 151 pages), they have to figure out much space we have to work with and then we make some decisions on photos. They print out the proofs, send a copy to me and another to an editor, make any necessary final changes and we're done.

But things didn't quite go that smoothly this week.

Wednesday night, when I was making the push to finish, a number of tweets started flying about a shooting on The Strip in Tuscaloosa and that a football player was involved. It was about 3 a.m., and I was dead tired, but it was kind of one of those drop everything moments like when Brandon Deaderick got shot during a failed carjacking a few days before the 2009 season opener (shout out to Jonathan Harder for going with me to that crime scene). Short version: I just missed all the police, but talked to some witnesses and by the time I got home had a pretty good idea that the player in question had been in a fight but had not been shot.

Turns out that two people shot guns into the air to disperse the crowd. They were promptly arrested. We made it clear on BOL that there wasn't a shooting but didn't report the players' name until we were absolutely clear on what had happened.

So yes, it was an incredibly long night/morning for me, but I'd rather have no shooting and trouble pinning down the specifics rather than a shooting and a great story. Regardless, I'm still catching up on sleep.

Crimson and White (House)

This is one of the University of Alabama pictures from yesterday's visit to the White House (just to make sure I give the appropriate credit).

What's the most surprising thing in this photo?
1) Alabama being back for the second time in three years.
2) The players looking pretty good, although it's a shame Jesse Williams ins't in the front row with his neon green tie and mohawk.
3) Proof that Nick Saban can smile.

So what caused such a reaction? Here's the transcript from the White House:


THE PRESIDENT: Now, that's a nice-looking jersey right there. (Laughter and applause.)
COACH SABAN: From the 2011 national champs. (Applause.) We would also like to give you a helmet over here. We certainly don't want to be responsible for any head injuries that the President might have. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: I was mentioning yesterday, I’m probably going to need a helmet between now and November. 

My version of the dark side of the moon ...

Something a little different, I was asked to be one of the media "coaches" for Alabama's A-Day Game (which for those of you who don't know is the final scrimmage of spring football). In addition to taking this photo of Nick Saban giving his post-game talk, which is not that good, I also wrote a column, which was pretty good.

Anyway, it was an amazing experience. Here's the link if you want to check it out: http://alabama.247sports.com/Article/Column-What-victory-looks-like-70418

Monday, April 9, 2012

Men at work

Ok, I'm just going to make sort of a mass-public apology here, because this is one of those times I'm in my own little world.

This is meant for those of you who might have well-meaningly asked something along the lines of "How did the book changes go?" and I looked at you blankly like there was a horn coming out of your head. That was followed by a pause as I bit my tongue to keep from saying something like "Oh, yeah, it took 20 minutes."

Like I said, own little world, especially with so much going on.

Basically, here's been my process:

1) I went through the entire original book and decided what to throw out, and/or what needed to be updated.

2) Made a list of things to add, either as a main entry or a sub-entry.

3) Threw out the previous order, figured out a new means for listing everything 1-100, and re-assigned all the sub-entries to the 100.

4) Created what I call the blueprint, listing everything in order and every change I plan to make.

5) Go in order, update every entry that needs to be updated, check everything again to make sure it's in the right place etc., and write all new entries. Also, be flexible to new ideas. For example, just today I threw out a sub-entry because I thought of a better one, wrote it up and then realized that I really needed to keep the original one so now I have an extra entry to squeeze in somewhere. Process, right?

6) After all 100 entries and sub-entries are completed write a new introduction, acknowledgments and source list.

7) Double check everything, edit and submit.

As I post this, I'm happy to let you all know that I'm officially half-way through step 5, as I got through all the changes to the new No. 50.

So what's No. 50? Sorry, you're just going to have to wait and see, but I appreciate everyone's patience as I try and get through this during the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Big news on the book front

Well, I've been sort of biting my tongue about a book project I thought I'd be letting everyone know about by now, but something else has come up instead.

I'm happy to announce that "100 Things Crimson tide Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die," will be updated and in stores before next season.

The previous edition was published in 2008 -- two national championships and a Heisman Trophy ago -- but instead of just adding some entries the book will have a completely new approach and more information.

For example, the Hall of Fame players and coaches, and national championships will no longer be bunched up.

So if you don't have a copy you may want to get one before they become collector's items. Otherwise look for the new edition in a few months.