SouthernRabbit

I question whether Copeland even fumbled the ball. The Alabama linebacker, Tana Patrick, very deliberately -- probably not just as an opportunistic afterthought -- knocked the ball out of Copeland's grasp.

I say this possibly because of personal experience. We had just moved to north Florida from north Mississippi in 1959, where as a high school junior I had gained 5 or 600 yards in 1958 from my left halfback position. In our first game in Florida, my "new" Florida quarterback, the very first time I "received" a handoff from him, off right tackle, slammed the ball into my left (upper) arm and the ball went caroming off in front of me five or ten yards, and was covered by the opposing team. No way I fumbled that ball. But the coaches took ME out of the game, not the QB, and I didn't get back into that game on offense.

If you want to say that Copeland fumbled the ball as a "sin of omission" -- he omitted sufficiently covering it up with two hands -- maybe so. But it cannot be denied that the Alabama linebacker, Patrick, was the one who performed the "act of COMmission."

Verne Lundquist branded the play immediately as a fumble by Copeland. My immediate thought was, "Well, Verne, you never carried the football either, did you?"

You learn as a runner pretty quick to carry the ball as snugly as the situation seems to call for. My other immediate thoughts were these: (1) Copeland is a MAN -- "Who's strong enough to knock the ball out of HIS grasp?" Surely this COULD have played into Copeland's own thinking. (2) "I'm already about to cross the goal line with the ball; what could happen at THIS point?"

Going for the ball as they go for it today did not become nearly so prominent until the more athletic Black backs began swinging the ball out from their bodies. This of course was decades ago. But what a photogenic pose it was, until the tacklers (and certainly their coaches)starting catching on: "Say, we could take over the ball instead of just downing the runner, if you would just take a good swat at that thing."

But Copeland, though we didn't get a good view of it on TV, apparently had the ball tucked away just fine. Linebacker Patrick, with a deftly placed swat, knocked it out from his grasp.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine. Originally, the phrase "carrying the ball like a loaf of bread" pertained to the old inexperienced white-boy's way of tucking the ball snugly under his arm, so that both ends of the ball protruded, front and back, under his carrying arm.

Coaches would naturally holler at him in practice, saying,"Boy, quit carrying that thing like a loaf of bread!" The danger was obvious -- all a tackler had to do was tap the ball from the front or back of the runner, and out it would come onto the turf.

When the more athletic Black backs began swinging the ball out from their body, the phrase "carrying the ball like a loaf of bread" was transferred -- "flipped," as it were -- from identifying a clumsy hold of the ball under one's arm -- to the very opposite action, that of swinging the ball out from one's body.

Copeland was doing neither -- he seems to have had the ball tucked correctly, but he lost it anyhow. My guess is that the Alabama linebacker was specifically trained by his coaches how to take a swat at the ball when it is being carried correctly by the back.

Garfield

You have put your finger on something that is noticeable about the state of Louisiana, that sets the state of Louisiana off from other Southern states, and which has a way of turning people off who are from other Southern states.

In the first place, I don't think Louisiana people want to be like people in other Southern states. All you have to do to gather this is to read their comments about us as being "inbred," etc. It most probably has to do with the fact that the rest of the South is basically Protestant, and Louisiana has a very strong Catholic heritage.

Louisiana is a culture apart from the rest of the South, even though such a definition is becoming a thing of the past because of the intermingling of cultures due to travel, mass media, etc. But that doesn't deter the basic Louisianan from his close-knit existence with others in his state. He has, basically, an attitude of "it's us against the world."

When it comes to his football, the Louisianan has a difficult time separating his feelings of being superior to other Southerners, when the football team of another Southern state is superior to his Louisiana football team. It makes no sense to him. "He is inferior to me; how can his football team be superior to mine?"

It is a fact that per capita Louisiana puts out more good football players than most if not all other states do. This only compounds the Louisianan's confusion when his team gets beat by another Southern team. And that includes in recruiting. You "can't blame" him for wanting desperately to keep his blue-chippers at home at his school. What is hard for us "outsiders" to take, though, is his inability to see himself as we see him and his confusion about the whole thing.

I'm glad that this is being discussed among LSU fans.

It seems that the further away from the Bear Bryant years we have come, the harder it is for younger LSU fans to wrap their collective mind around the idea that there is anything distinctive about the history of Alabama football.

The reason for that may be that these younger LSU fans genuinely seem to remember as far back as Nick Saban at LSU -- and no further. They know that the great Billy Cannon led LSU to a storied national championship in 1958, and that he won the Heisman Trophy in 1959 with what might well have been the greatest run in college football history.

LSU has had two "perfect seasons" in its history -- that one in 1958 and this one under discussion in 1908. Actually, you could count other undefeated and untied seasons in LSU history -- 1895 (3-0-0), 1896 (6-0-0), 1898 (1-0-0), and 1905 (3-0-0). LSU, at the turn of the 20th century, had very creditable football teams.

One problem with any historical evaluation of Southern college football is that it grew up down in this part of the country away from the Press in the Northeast, Midwest, and even the Northwest, where teams such as Stanford and Washington were getting "ink" by about 1920. That "Northern Press," to my way of thinking, was still overrating Big Ten teams and Notre Dame as late as the 1960's and 1970's.

My college roommate at Samford University in 1960 was Wayne Atcheson, who is the man who came up with the five pre-Bryant national championships at Alabama, when Wayne was SID for Ray Perkins at the University of Alabama. This was about 1983. Wayne is now the librarian and curator for the Billy Graham Library and Museum, at Asheville, North Carolina. You are not going to find a more mild-mannered, well-meaning person in the country, in my opinion. He grew up near Clanton, Alabama as the son of a humble Baptist preacher. He was the sponsor-director of the University of Alabama chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for several years, even after he had left the SID position.

My impression of what Wayne did comes probably from the general impression we had in the sixties and seventies that the Northern Press had long since jumped on the Knute Rockne-Frank Leahy-Ara Parseghian bandwagon at Notre Dame. Curiously, Ohio State was a latecomer to this party by way of Woody Hayes' achievements in the fifties and sixties. Apparently Michigan had always been a juggernaut, and Michigan State under Duffy Daughtery also came into prominence during the fifties and sixties.

Sportswriter Beano Cook made the statement before his death a few years ago that the Notre Dame SID in the fifties, whose name escapes me, was one of the best ever at his job, and that this SID was the reason that Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy in 1956 as the Notre Dame quarterback on a 2-8 team. It is the only time, I believe, that the Heisman has ever been won by a player on a team with a losing record. Runners-up to Hornung that year included Jim Brown and Tennessee's Johnny Majors.

Wayne Atcheson chose as his five pre-Bryant national championship teams at Alabama the 1925 (10-0-0), 1926 (9-0-1), 1930 (10-0-0), 1934 (10-0-0), and 1941 (9-2-0) teams. The 1925 team beat Washington 20-19 in the Rose Bowl; the 1926 team, undefeated in the regular season, tied Stanford 7-7 in the Rose Bowl; the 1930 team beat Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl; the 1934 team, with Bear Bryant as "the other end," beat Stanford 29-13 in the Rose Bowl; and the 1941 team beat Texas A&M 29-21 in the Cotton Bowl.

Marty Mule of New Orleans has written a large, well-done history of the Sugar Bowl, as well as a smaller book, a history of Tulane football. I think that if you were to read Peter Finney's history of LSU football, along with Mule's discussions of Tulane football, you would come to the conclusion that Tulane football, in spite of such legendary LSU players as Steve Van Buren and Y. A. Tittle, was probably at least as prominent as LSU football before the 1950's.

The great Tulane football coach in the 1920's (and maybe even '30s) was Clark Shaughnessy. If you were to look into the career of Shaughnessy, you would find that he was much like the great 49ers head coach Bill Walsh. Both men were brainy innovators and both coached at Stanford.

Here is the important point -- Shaughnessy's 1925 Tulane team was offered the chance to play Washington in the Rose Bowl -- but turned the chance down. The Rose Bowl committee then offered the chance to another Southern team -- the University of Alabama, who under Coach Wallace Wade proceeded to make history by being the first team from the South ever to play in the Rose Bowl. That Alabama team apparently surprised just about everyone by edging heavily favored Washington 20-19.

I challenge anyone on this Board -- if you are truly interested in this matter of Alabama football and its claims to national championships, then simply Google "Alabama wins the 1926 Rose Bowl." You will find that this was more than just another ball game. The major theme of historians of this event has been that, as far as many Southerners were concerned, it was as if the South had gotten back against the North for the first time since the Civil War.

Also please check out the list of early Rose Bowls. You will find, I think, that Alabama appeared in more Rose Bowls (during the '20s, '30s, and '40s) than all other Southern teams combined. Unfortunately I have to mention this -- LSU was never invited to the Rose Bowl.

The great LSU tradition is of Billy Cannon running for glory against Ole Miss in 1959 -- after LSU had won the National Championship in 1958 with an undefeated, untied season. I know I will sound like "Pug" in Herman Wouk's THE WINDS OF WAR, (or indeed Forrest Gump), but I met Billy Cannon in Baton Rouge three months before he ran The Run. I am all too aware of what I consider THE GREAT LSU FOOTBALL TRADITION. That Run, in my humble opinion, is the greatest event in the history of Southern football. It should be commemorated, also in my opinion, by a statue outside Tiger Stadium.

Wayne Atcheson wrote what he did in about 1983 because he felt that Notre Dame had been showered with glory by the Northern Press, while Alabama's achievements, highly valued by many Southerners, had been largely disregarded and forgotten by that same Northern Press. While that Press had spoken freely over the years about the great Rockne and Leahy teams as being national champions during the '20s, '30s, and '40s, remembrance of the great Rose Bowl teams of Alabama's during those same decades seemingly had gone by the wayside.

A corollary to this story is that an upstart newcomer, Robert Neyland of Tennessee, beat Wallace Wade's 1928 Alabama team 15-13. Coming on the heels of Alabama's appearances in the 1926 and 1927 Rose Bowls, this was an upset that "put Tennessee football on the map." It was not until the 1970's that Bear Bryant may have somewhat reduced the challenge of history provided by General Neyland's storied career at Tennessee, by beating Tennessee eleven straight times, 1971-1981.

This is to reply to The Mick as to his statement about coaches that "faded and then returned to prominence."

Please accept what I say here as one person's opinion. I give it because I have had the experience of following LSU football as a sometime Louisianan who also happens to be an Alabama fan.

Based upon the fact that The Mick has brought up Bear Bryant as a prominent coach who "faded and came back," I offer the following.

Paul Dietzel, who won an LSU national championship in 1958, came to LSU from Kentucky, where he had been an assistant to Bear Bryant. Charley McClendon had been a player for Bryant at Kentucky. I suppose that Dietzel brought Charley Mac to LSU, having known him at Kentucky.

Charley Mac won his SEC championship at LSU in 1969. It is absolutely true that Bryant "faded" in 1969 and 1970 (6-5 and 6-5-1), then came back during the seventies with three more national championships and several SEC championships.

It is my opinion that last Saturday's game at Tuscaloosa was a benchmark in Nick Saban's career that corresponds to the situation Bear Bryant faced in 1970 and 1971. Saban's nemesis has been LSU and Les Miles, just as Tennessee (and in retrospect, General Robert Neyland)was Bryant's.

I can't with confidence rattle off all the figures, but I have run them before and I have run them by quite a few sportswriters over here. Right now there is a TV special in the works that is supposed to discuss this very subject, centering around the fact that Bryant began recruiting Black football players to Alabama in the early 1970's.

By the end of the 1960's Bryant realized that he could no longer win with the "two-fisted little Aggie," like he had done at A&M in the fifties and also at Alabama in the early sixties. The Game had caught up with him, in that football players were getting bigger and faster, and the Black athlete was changing the face of college football.

There is reason to believe that Alabama was not offered a Rose Bowl berth after the undefeated and untied 1961 national championship season because Alabama had no Black players; and that his undefeated and untied 1966 Alabama team with Kenny Stabler at QB was denied the national championship for this same reason.

Bryant's problem was that he could not bring the Black athlete to Alabama. Facts have been upturned that show that he actually had a few Blacks in his practices during the late sixties. A Birmingham sportswriter has stated this in a recent article.

How was Bryant to handle his predicament? It seems obvious that he thought long and hard about it and came up with a three-part answer. First, he turned down the offer by the Miami Dolphins to be their head coach -- Don Shula took the job and the rest is history. Second, he asked his longtime friend Darrell Royal (U of Texas) to teach him the Wishbone offense. Third, he asked another longtime friend, John McKay (USC), to agree to play a home and home with Bama in 1970 and 1971.

That 1970 game with USC is the subject of the upcoming TV piece. Sam "Bam" Cunningham "liked to killed us" was Bryant's description of the game as USC drubbed Alabama 42-21 in Birmingham. Bryant apparently had planned this. He took Cunningham around to the Bama locker room after the game and said, "THIS is a football player." Right then and there he indoctrinated the South to the Black Athlete.

In the summer of 1971 Bryant forbade reporters or anyone else to see his practices while he and his coaches installed the Wishbone in secret behind closed doors. USC at their place was the first game of the 1971 season. Alabama surprised USC and everyone else, beating the Trojans and McKay 17-10.

Back to the subject of Saban and Miles -- and Bryant and Tennessee. I don't think this has ever been brought out into the open like it ought to be, that by 1970 Alabama and Tennessee were head to head -- EVEN -- in their longtime rivalry. I don't have the figures before me, but they were tied as to wins and losses.

I will venture this opinion here -- the reason Saban cracked a smile and jumped into McCarron's arms Saturday was that he broke the tie between himself and Miles as to regular season wins. The overall record between them now is 5-3.

Compare that to Bryant and Tennessee. Bryant had played at Alabama against General Neyland and Tennessee during the mid-thirties. He knew that Neyland year in and year out had gotten the better of Frank Thomas, Bryant's coach at Alabama. When Bryant was head coach at Kentucky, he never beat Neyland; he did tie him once.

When Bryant came to Alabama in 1958, Neyland was long gone, and Bama was ahead of Tennessee by one win in the overall series. By 1970, Tennessee had drawn even with Bama, which means that Bryant as head coach at Bama had lost one more game to Tennessee than he had won. In fact, he had lost three straight to them, in 1968, 1969, and 1970.

Bryant's old players will all tell you that he especially "loved to beat Tennessee." I think that these long term head-to-head records are important to head coaches, though they will never admit it. They look at "the papers" just like everyone else. Everyone has a tendency, after all, to ask the question, "How do I figure into all this?"

A determined Bryant, starting in 1971, beat Tennessee eleven straight years, and Tennessee has never caught back up. Right now I think that Alabama may be twelve games ahead in the series.

The question facing LSU people is this, isn't it? What is going to be the long term record between Saban and Miles? The same thing faces Alabama fans, doesn't it? Is 2013 what 1970 was to Bryant? Where does this go from here?

Just as Bryant faced the problem of not being able to compete (like he wanted to) without Black players, Saban has, in effect, had to compete with himself. How many head coaches build up a program into a powerhouse and then have to turn around and play that very same program?

THE QUESTION posed in this thread is whether Les Miles can come back from "fading away"? I have written this to try to point out that it is not just Les Miles and LSU who are involved in this situation. I don't propose to venture an opinion as to the Miles-LSU side of the question. I leave that to the appropriate people.

Basically, this is a fair assessment. It has its problems, but it is a fair assessment.

I knew Ron Gaspar personally. Ron was an ex-football coach who had suffered an accident that left him paralyzed and in a wheelchair. He wrote about football from his home in Chalmette and would come on WWL Radio with Hap Glaudi and provide football expertise for Hap's show. Ron was known around New Orleans as "Mr. Football."

When Bear Bryant visited the Chalmette area late in his career, he came to see Ron Gaspar. Ron made the obvious statement to Bryant that once Bryant retired, Alabama would have a difficult time replacing him. In this prediction Ron Gaspar proved to be prophetic, as obvious as his prophecy was.

The question, as I see it, is whether Alabama will learn from that experience. Or maybe it is rather that a Bryant or a Saban only comes along about once every fifty years, and the question then becomes, is Alabama going to be fortunate enough to get him when he does come along.

When Steve Spurrier had thrashed around in the pros and then at Duke University, Florida was able to pluck him off the coaching tree, probably for a number of reasons. Spurrier was a Florida alumnus, for one, and then he was, and is, a sort of maverick. He would reject an offer from Alabama right before Saban accepted his Alabama offer, and I don't think Spurrier would have accepted an Alabama offer back when he was at Duke. Spurrier is all about doing something that no one else has ever done, and it may be that he thought he could never top Bear Bryant anyhow.

It's not hard to see where LSU people are coming from. Your immediate concern is this bumper-crop recruiting class that is sitting out there in your state right now. You just came away from another concern, whether you could beat Alabama and Saban at this point in Les Miles' career. That didn't go so well, and so now you are rightfully concerned to keep Fournette and company -- what's left of it -- in state.

In spite of ourselves, we really can't predict the future. We don't KNOW how long Nick Saban is going to be at Alabama. You can come on here and SAY you know, probably in hopes of persuading Fournette and company, but the truth is, you can't predict what Nick Saban is going to do, and neither can I.

Aside from the fact that Saban is "poised on the your border" with his recruiting lieutenants, you probably don't feel much different than people in Georgia or Tennessee do about Saban and Alabama. He raids those two states for players too. Then again, you had him, and you lost him, and that's an experience they haven't had. But I wish you might, for example, just get on the Volquest or AJC Football Forums, and you would see that your feelings about Alabama and Nick Saban aren't that unique.

I will say this about Saban, and I think it needs to be said. He is recruiting as hard right now, as far as I can see, as he ever has. He spoke to and met with the recruits this past weekend after laying the LSU game plan aside.

Saban right now is two behind Bear Bryant (four to six) in number of national championships won. He said when he came to Bama that he intended to do better than ANYone else had ever done there. As has been pointed out on ESPN, Saban can more or less snap his fingers at Alabama, and the powers that be provide him with whatever he calls for, so far as the football program is concerned.

I recall something said on WWL by a member of the Sugar Bowl Committee about thirty years ago. He said that nothing ever gets done about a football program until the people supporting it get tired of the situation and do something about it. That happened at Alabama in the mid-nineteen-fifties and in the first decade of the 21st century. Who knows what the future holds? As Wayne Huizenga said, "It is what it is."

This is my answer to the question regarding early departures to the NFL and why McCarron and Mosley are still at Alabama this year.

I think that the emphasis upon leadership is stronger at Alabama than at other places, including LSU. McCarron is the leader on offense of this Alabama team, and Mosley is the leader on defense. It's that simple, really.

Saban probably brought the two of them into his office and told them, 'With you two as our leaders, we could make another run at a championship season.'

Saban is the one who brought in the two leaders that won your two recent national championships -- they were both named Matt -- Mauck and Flynn. Just as McCarron hasn't received credit from the national media regarding this part of his game, so Mauck and Flynn have never received credit for that part of their game.

Saban's policy obviously is to turn a guy loose to the pros if his athleticism is his chief asset. Seems that this is the best policy, particularly when you factor in the possibility that a career-ending injury can deprive a player of tens of millions of dollars.

Bear Bryant established the principle at Alabama that winning championships is the primary goal of the program. Nick Saban has followed that policy. It is possible that he learned it from his college coach at Kent State, Don James, who recently died but was a Bear Bryant aficionado if not an outright disciple of his. James won a national championship at Washington in about 1991.

"The Legends Tent on the Quad" is a game day tradition on the Alabama campus, when the "legends" of the past sign autographs for the fans before the game. Most of these "legends" contributed as players to a championship. This is looked upon as an honor by Alabama football players. This is this sort of thing, I think, that kept McCarron and Mosley at Alabama this year.

Quarterback Pat Trammell was Bryant's initial leader at Alabama when they won the 1961 AP and UP national championship. My New Orleans friend, who was AD and basketball coach at a private school there, is an Alabama fan. When Trammell died at age 28, my friend said, "He could have been governor of Alabama."

I've never thought Mark Ingram was the greatest. I always liked Trent Richardson, since I saw him play in high school. I was wrong about Eddie Lacy.

I don't measure Alabama football players by what they do in the pros. I will say THIS -- Neither Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler, nor Bart Starr is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Stabler is not even in the NFL Hall of Fame. Starr hardly even played main team at Alabama -- he was there during the nadir of Alabama football, before Bear Bryant came in and changed things in 1958.

From the standpoint of what he did as an Alabama football player, Pat Trammell was the greatest quarterback of all time. And no doubt, 95% of the Ranters don't even know who he was. Trammell never made it to the pros, and he died of cancer at age 28 as a young doctor.

Pat Trammell is looked upon as the Captain of Alabama football. Why? because Bear Bryant called him "the favorite person of my life. He couldn't pass and he couldn't run. All he could do was win."

Pat Trammell won Bear's first national championship, at Alabama in 1961. He wore #12. Every Alabama quarterback since then has worn #12 if he could get it. McCarron wears #10 -- Greg McElroy had #12 when McCarron came into the program.

This is why I think that the whole national discussion on the "Game Manager" is hokum. You come to Alabama as a quarterback, you are expected first and foremost to be the Game Manager. You don't make mistakes. You make the others around you better. In fact, if they aren't putting out like they should, you get on their case. Bryant said that "the rest of the players followed Trammell like little puppies."

The 1958 LSU team had a great Game Manager -- Warren Rabb. He probably hasn't received the acclaim he deserves. He won you a national championship by steering the ship through a perfect season and a national championship in both the AP and UP.

This is what I think so many people miss -- football is just as much about using your head as it is about using your athleticism. As Nick Saban says, focus on your job. You want swagger? Well, you better attend to the focus before you concern yourself with the swagger.

What a guy does in the pros after he leaves your team -- what do you care, anyhow? You want him to apply himself to doing the best for you and your team while he is at your place.

I don't care that much for pro football anyway.

I hate to think how long it has been since women reporters were first allowed into football locker rooms.

Given that, how can we be surprised if one of them walks in on a defensive coaches' planning meeting?

Make up your own joke -- where do they pop up next?

MAD magazine used to have a segment called "Scenes We'd Like to See." Political correctness being what it is today, she can come into my locker room or conference room, but I better not let my imagination run wild here as to "scenes I'd like to see" when she did come in there.

The two posters who speak of Saban's being in "a Redneck Hell" (the State of Alabama), in my opinion, are closest to what the whole relationship of Saban to LSU is all about.

I'm 70 years old. I spent 28 of those years in the State of Louisiana. The majority of that was in and around New Orleans, but some of it was spent in Prairieville, and during that period I spent a lot of time in Baton Rouge. I was among other things a National Guard chaplain, which had me travelling among several southeast Louisiana cities, from Bogalusa to Thibodeaux to New Orleans.

I have lived in Gulf Shores, Alabama, for the past twenty years. We came over here from New Orleans mainly so my wife could take care of her mother.

I knew when I was in New Orleans that my Southern drawl turned some people off. My wife somehow handled that better than I, even though she's from Birmingham. Our son was born and raised in New Orleans, and our daughter was born in Baton Rouge and grew up in New Orleans.

As I say, I think that two of the Ranters have hit the nail on the head when they refer to Saban and the "miserable redneck Hell" of Alabama. Have you ever read the old Uncle Remus story about Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch? Br'er rabbit begged Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit not to throw him into the briar patch -- which is of course where they then threw him.

I think that some people find their briar patch sooner, and some find it later. To some people the "Redneck Hell" of Alabama is their briar patch. Bear Bryant referred to coming back to Alabama in 1958 by saying that "Mama called." When he answered that call, he found that his wife, who was from an upper class Birmingham family, was "in Hog's Heaven."

As one of the Ranters has noted, West Virginia, where Nick Saban is from, is not that different, culturally, from Alabama, just as Arkansas, where Bryant was from, is not that different from Alabama.

I went through grades 3-6 in New Orleans during the fifties. When we went back to New Orleans in 1968, part of it involved the allure of New Orleans. As they say, there is probably no other place quite like it in the U.S. It is like a beautiful woman. I love some of the people there more than some of the redneck people I love over here. But I know I'm basically a Redneck, and though I don't necessarily love South Alabama as much as I thought I would, I know I am a better fit here than I was in New Orleans -- or Prairieville, for that matter.

Billy Cannon has been my hero, since I met him in 1959 at the Baton Rouge drugstore where his trophies were. I have thought for many decades that his statue -- of THE RUN -- should be outside Tiger Stadium. But I am also a dyed-in-the-wool Bama fan, ever since I saw his Sunday evening show during the 1959 football season when I was a HS senior in north Florida.

Hate is a strong word. As I say, I found people in Louisiana who I consider the Salt of the Earth and my good friends. I actually painted a portrait of a young man who was expected to play halfback for LSU when he was killed in a car accident on his prom night. The parents would probably tell you to this day that the picture helped them through their worst times.

LSU is a great football program. That Nick Saban left it is no indication that he didn't realize this. If we lived in a perfect world, and we don't, I would like to consider LSU as a worthy opponent. There is a difference between an opponent and an enemy.

When my parents moved us to northwest Florida in 1959, my football coach evidently didn't know I could run the ball and neither did my quarterback. I spent the second game of the season mostly blocking favored Chipley, Florida's right defensive end from my left halfback slot. We tied 6-6. When the whistle blew to end the game, he suddenly stepped towards me, extended his right hand, and said, "We didn't know you all had this much." That, my friend, is what I mean by an opponent. I shook his hand and was proud to do it. That's the way I'd like to think of the LSU-Alabama rivalry.