Alabama (Game 4)

Congrats to the Noles for winning the River City Bowl this weekend. I have never been to a regular season contest that felt more like a Bowl game than this one. Equal amounts of fans from both schools, no real animosity and a great tailgating atmosphere. Bad Stadium (no bathrooms in the parking lots, concessions were a joke, not a single in-game stat or out of town score, and a glass partition fell off the upper deck of the Stadium, shattered and crashed into a dozen Nole fans at the top of our section - and the EMT's took 30-45 minutes to saunter up to solve the problem) aside, the game was great fun. Being 12-1 in Jacksonville in our last 13 games is a good thing. Let's hope we go back there in December...

Those Bama fans are terrific. Love the houndstooth pattern hats & dresses. The pregame Band & chants were fun, coordinated and loud. The steady swoosh sound of 40,000 pom-poms being violently waved at once was a little less than intimidating, but nice to watch. Since everyone in the Stadium had the same colors on, the poms, apparel and accent (I heard one 70+ old Bammer proclaim to his wife on entry "We gown beat these sum-bitches silly") were the only discernable differences...Once the ball left the tee, we flat took over. Make no mistake, The Chiefs and our fans made a difference in that ballgame. We were loud and the players were feeding off of it. That defensive series near the goal line that occurred right in front of the Band (and my family), it was runway deafening, and our guys were running around like starved coyotes.

I expect that CBS (who covers the SEC every week) was not surprised at the bagels on the halftime scoreboard, but I can assure you that we were. Four straight Elephant waltzes (123 Kick) to open the game is ridiculous. This is w/o Geno Hayes (who tasered Bama in the final 3 quarters), Bud Thacker, Neefy Moffit or Andre Fluellen (who also "elbowed" his way in later). We flat dominated that team for 3 1/2 quarters. Derrick Nicholson is improving at an exponential rate, and Marcus Ball is getting confident again. I know that we want to excoriate the secondary for the end of the game, but I think it more important that we give credit for the great job they did in the first 50 minutes. No Pachyderm was open - at all. That is why John Parker Smith Jones Lee Wilson kept dumping it off. And confidence is the key word right now. These kids believe that they can dominate, and that is huge. We shut out Clemson in the second half, Colorado in the first 50 minutes and Alabama for the same. We get healthy and this defense gives us a chance to win every week. Everette Brown is becoming the force I thought he would. I love it when angry 6'4" 255 pound men leave their feet on a dead sprint to flatten a small white boy who thought he could escape. Uhhh, leave the ball here, young man...you are going to need to rest for a while and get those grass stains out of your teeth. Also, apparently Geno Hayes does not like orange (jumpsuits) any more than the rest of us. I believe that the Coach Bowden punishment system woke up the Madison Monster. He made two absolutely incredible plays - one where he flattened (Tallahasse boy and Bama RB) Roy Upchurch on a screen in between a sea of UA Lineman starting to set up a wall. If he does not make that play, it is a HUGE gain - and when he knifed in to drop Grant for a 4 yard loss on a sweep, it cemented Alabama's belief that they could not run outside for the rest of the game.

Oh yeah, the offense played better too.

See you next week.