University of Alabama Football Report for 12/30/11

People have dreams all the time. It don't mean nothin.
--Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
He forever dreamed of funerals.

Never death. There is a difference.

He dreamed he walked the aisle to see Hank Williams lie in repose. A Cadillacwide pearlwhite casket with a black lead sheet inlay along the length denoting the melody of "Ramblin' Man." Inside, the man himself. Pale. His dermis thin like

University of Alabama Football Report for 12/09/11

Trent Richardson is in New York City to watch a Baptist quarterback win the Heisman, not that that's the worst thing in the world. Ask Oklahoma State. Or better yet, don't. They will likely need some time to calm down.

Some may look at the current national championship match up and think the system is broken. However, and this may not make you feel any better, it's not that the system is broken;

University of Alabama Football Report for 11/25/11

LSU 41
Arkansas 17

Well, now that that's over...

A few weeks ago, Alabama lost its chance at the national title by losing a close game against LSU in overtime. After Arkansas built up a two-touchdown lead on the top team in the nation yet saw their championship hopes gobbled up by the Honey Badger, we at last understand why the Great Leader thought missing field goals was a better option than

University of Alabama Football Report's Complete Guide to Defending the Triple Option

Stop the fullback dive.

Duh.

Roll Tide.

University of Alabama Football Report for 11/11/11

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Leaving Bryant-Denny Stadium last week, after watching the worst overtime series ever presided over by a quarterback not named Clausen, after watching kick after kick after kick fall short or wide (or both) of the goalposts, after watching the man in charge of it all watch all that

University of Alabama Football Report for 11/04/11: Game of the Century of the Week Edition

The elephant whose sturgeon-like blood
insists it was or ought to be aquatic,
whose ears, like hairy crackle-glazed chopping boards,
are cheerfully agreeing to be fans,
fingers his marulas with a trunk
strong enough to paralyze a tiger...

--Selima Hill, "The Elephant Whose Sturgeon-like Blood,"
the Poetry Daily selection for 10/31/11
Just how big is tomorrow's game featuring LSU at Alabama?

University of Alabama Football Report for 10/21/2011

“I have wasted my life.”

The last line of James Wright’s poem “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” has always frazzled me.

Is he talking about the moment itself? Unlikely. His life is elsewhere. Lying in hammock is a moment of leisure, a departure from life as it must be lived. Plus, there’s barely a speaker at all in the majority of the poem, just an eye:

University of Alabama Football Report for 10/14/11

Ninety-nine years ago today, Theodore Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt by being both a protracted speaker and a total bad-ass. TR was to deliver a speech on the campaign trail explaining his split from the Republican Party when he was shot by a .38 slug that drilled through fifty pages of notes, dented his spectacle case, and lodged just shy of his right lung.

And deliver it he did!

University of Alabama Football Report for 10/07/11

News this week of Missouri's Board of Curators (curators? Like a museum? O... K...) considering leaving Texas's Big X(II) in favor of another athletic conference, presumably the SEC, garnered little excitement and a fair amount of smug derision. What does Missouri offer the Southeastern Conference other than yet another team with a tiger mascot? Does Mizzou football, which is what this is really

University of Alabama Football Report for 9/30/11

“Many of the 223 Hispanic students at Foley Elementary came to school Thursday crying and afraid. . . . Nineteen of them withdrew, and another 39 were absent.”
--Rena Havner Philips, Mobile Press-Register
One of the needling concerns I have for this country--slotted somewhere between third-world-style oligarchic rule and zombie apocalypse--is the future health of college football. Now, I’m not

University of Alabama Football Report for 9/23/2011

Well, you know, I don't get any hot dog at halftime. I don't. I don't even drink a Coke. I coach the team at halftime. You get your little halftime break, and then you have your little ass back in your seat ready to go when the next half starts.
--Nick Saban from his radio show, 9/22/2011
Corporate beverage sponsors and hard-working concessions vendors aside, not many people will take issue with