Does anyone have a list of which recruits to watch for tomorrow?  And if you've got times and/or links, that'd definitely be helpful.  I haven't kept up as well this year as normal, but I do want to know what's going on while I'm stuck at the office.  I already know Clowney isn't announcing for another week or two, but we're watching Crowell (probably UGA) and Cyrus K (hopefully AL).  There's gotta be a couple more I'm missing, right?  Roll Tide!

You ever wish real life was actually a movie with alternate endings?  Even if the final outcome was the same, I, personally would like to have seen what would have happened in that 4th quarter if we had done what we've normally done when being down to an opponent in the 4th quarter.  Let me give you some examples:

9/15/2007 - Arkansas at Alabama

Arkansas is up 38-31 and Alabama drives 46 yards in 12 plays.  With 4:20 to go in the ballgame, on 4th-&-6, Tiffin kicks a 42-yd field goal to cut the score to 38-34.  The pressure goes back on Arkansas to make a play to win the ballgame, and our defense holds, gets the football back and we score the game winning touchdown with :08 left.  Bama wins 41-38.

11/27/2009 - Alabama at Auburn

Alabama is down 21-14 and Auburn has been able to move the football on the Alabama defense throughout the game.  With 5:32 left in the 3rd quarter, we have 4th-&-7 from the Auburn 10 yard line.  Tiffin kicks a 27-yd field goal to cut the lead to 21-17.  The very next possession, we get an interception from Chris Todd, drive to the Auburn 13 yard line, and, on 4th-&-10, Tiffin kicks a 30-yd field goal to make it 21-20.  Of course we come down the field at the end of the ballgame and score the winning touchdown to make the final score 26-21.

9/25/2010 - Alabama at Arkansas

Arkansas has been moving the football on our defense the entire ballgame, and our defense has not really shown any signs of being able to keep up with Ryan Mallett.  We get the football, down 20-14, and drive to the Arkansas 11-yd line, and McElroy gets sacked for a loss of 8 to make it 4th-&-17 at the Arkansas 19.  Shelley comes in and kicks a 36-yd field goal to make it 20-17 with 6:01 left.  The pressure goes back on Arkansas's offense to make a play on offense, and our defense holds and we score the game winning touchdown with 3 minutes left to make the final score 24-20.

10/9/10 - Alabama at South Carolina

After scoring a touchdown to cut SC's lead down to 28-21, the momentum swung to Alabama and the pressure was up on South Carolina to make a play.  The defense grabbed their first turnover of the ballgame with an interception at the SC 37-yd line.  We drove to the SC 18-yd line and had 3rd-&-4 before McElroy took a sack to make it 4th-&-11.  Shelley came on for a 42-yd field goal with a chance to make it 28-24 with 11:35 left in the game, and put even more pressure on Garcia and the SC offense, who just turned the ball over under pressure in the 4th qtr to put us in the position...

Now, we all know how it ended up playing out, with our non-converted fake field goal, which swung momentum back to South Carolina and allowed them to go up 35-21 rather than having to do something with the football only up 28-24 with all the momentum on the Bama side after 10 straight points by the Tide.

I know that we can't guarantee that Shelley would have made that field goal, but he had just hit one from 39 from the same hashmark in the 3rd quarter.  I know we also cannot guarantee our defense could have made another stop, but they had just made one to put us in that position.  And we all know when you put Stephen Garcia in a position to have to make a play, good things happen for opposing defenses. 

In my opinion, running a fake-fg there deflates your own defense by telling them, basically, that you don't believe they can stop SC's offense.  Don't get me wrong...there was not just one play that lost this ballgame - McElroy holding on to the ball too long and taking sacks all day, the defense not being able to make a stop, the ineptness of the running game, and our inability to convert touchdowns were all big factors - but I believe we had a chance here to play smart football and go with the percentages, which we normally do.  As badly as we were beaten, even being down by 18 at one point, even running into that buzzsaw in Columbia, we were still in a position, in the 4th quarter, to win the football game.  We've lived off making the other team make the mistakes.  I'm not sure what happened in this situation to change the coaches' M.O.

There's nothing I enjoy more than finding out how much more there is to a story than anyone else really realizes.

Myself and Pops Tider made another post to MemphisTider.com (http://memphistider.blogspot.com/2010/07/one-last-ode-to-roy-kramer.html) regarding how much the conference office has screwed the University of Alabama, and how prior SEC commissioner, Mr. Roy Kramer has a bit to do with it.

If you'd like to read more indepth, the article is fairly long over at our site, but to keep this fanpost short, here's the disturbing information.  The league office has had "previous game influence" in 48 games for Alabama's opponents for the past 7 years.  In 70% of those games (34 games out of the 48) our opponent has scheduled either a bye week or a non-conference opponent the week before they play us (Sisters of the Poor, Central Tech St, etc).  The league office has had our opponent play either Vandy or Kentucky 10 times out of the other 14.  That leaves 4 more, games, and 3 of those were Auburn facing Georgia before they face us, and all three times Auburn had a bye week before Georgia.

Not once in that time frame has an opponent played Florida, LSU, Auburn or Tennessee before facing us.

Read the rest of the article if you think this is a little suspicious.  In contrast, Tennessee has faced a team coming off a game against a conference opponent 60% of the time - double what we have.

Hey hey fellas (and chicks, of course).  I need a lil help.  My band was chosen as one of 6 bands out of about 150+ bands to be in AlternativeAddiction.com's "Next Big Thing" contest this month.

I need everyone to roll on over to the following site...

http://www.alternativeaddiction.com/unknownbands/nextbigthing

...and vote for Prosevere (that's my band).  Oh yeah - and take a listen to the song as well.  Haha.  We've got a new cd coming out July 26th and that's the first single.

Thanks guys!  Roll Tide!