For the next several days, we here at Eleven Warriors are going to dissect the Sugar Bowl from every possible angle. Ramzy will probably write something poignant and thought-provoking, Tim and Pat will give you the steady flow of team info that you crave, Kyle and Ross' analysis will likely cause you to hit up a thesaurus, and the other twelve hundred writers that we have on staff will do their usual awesome thing.
Me? Well, my bag is usually fart jokes (every website needs a good fart joke craftsman), but today I have been assigned the role of investigative reporter.
It's all well and good to want to beat Alabama. I want that too. But to truly defeat an enemy, you must also truly know said enemy, and that's where I come in. There are many, many reasons that a defeat of the University of Alabama in the 2015 Sugar Bowl will go a long way toward righting the karmic balance of the universe, so let's start at the beginning and learn about how a humble agrarian college built on the blood and sweat of enslaved human beings went on to become a beacon for skinny white dudes in boat shoes and khaki shorts.
- ESTABLISHED 1831
- TYPE Public
- ENDOWMENT $631.95MM
- UNDERGRADS 36,155
- COLORS Crimson & White
- NICKNAME Crimson Tide
- MASCOT Big Al
- FIGHT SONG Yea Alabama
GEOGRAPHY
The physical geography of the Tuscaloosa area is varied but not particularly severe. There are hilly, forested highlands to the north, and a lower lying marshy plain to the south. These features, coupled with an abundance of water and an overall mild climate, make the area surrounding the University of Alabama well-suited for mass farming. Like the kind that might require a lot of workers, or something.
That's kind of weird that I would mention that, right?
HISTORY
The University of Alabama was built by slaves.
And not just in the "the largely white landed gentry of the South greatly benefited from the liberal use of free human labor during the antebellum period" kind of way; I mean to say that slaves were used by the state of Alabama to construct the buildings that initially compromised most of the university (more on that in a second). I guess that shouldn't be a huge shock given that Alabama was of course a slave state and major contributor to the southern cause during the Civil War, but as a degenerate Yankee it's nice to know I went to a school that doesn't feature the literal graves of enslaved black people.
So anyway, in the 1820s bigwigs in Alabama decided they wanted their own little Harvard of the south. A venerable institution that would show people the intelligence and industry of people in Alabama. Acceptance requirements were set sky-high, and graduation was even more difficult, meaning that it wasn't a huge surprise when 97 of the 105 students enrolled in 1835 failed to graduate.
The university relaxed both admission standards and graduation requirements, and by the 1860s, Alabama had become a fine institution of higher learning that also spent a large part of its energies toward training and arming soldiers to fight against the federal government of the United States of America. For its transgression of being on the wrong damn side of history, all but a handful of the school's buildings (and many of the city at large) were burned right to the ground a mere five days before the end of the Civil War.
If this seems like kind of a dick move to you, please keep in mind that a) the university and Tuscaloosa at large had been supplying both human and material fodder to help perpetuate a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, b) nobody died or anything although there are the usual bedtime stories of Yankees being all mean and stuff, and c) a Koran was spared, which is kind of a cool story.
Alabama quickly recovered, and by the early 1900s several Greek organizations had sprung up, despite the opposition of many administrators. Greek life is a gigantic part of student life at Alabama, with a third of the student population paying for friends on a semester-by-semester installment plan (for comparison's sake, Ohio State has about 11% of students involved in a frat or sorority). Greek life at Alabama has taken some hits in recent years, due to an admissions system that ensured de facto segregation and has only marginally gotten better within the last year or two, but the good news is that there are some people who are fighting hard to change that for the better. "That" being the situation where black people are told they can't join the same clubs as white people.
In the year of our Lord two thousand and fourteen.
I want to pause right here and point out a few things. I've been pretty exceedingly negative so far, and I don't want that negativity to imply that I don't think anything worthwhile has ever happened at the University of Alabama or especially that anyone who went or is going to Alabama currently are a bunch of racists. I'm sure that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of people have graduated from there are kind, decent people who got a great education that they value.
The University of Alabama itself has a beautiful campus, including a terrific library with millions of volumes and a really cool museum of natural history. As it did after a devastating tornado in 2011, the university impacts many people in Tuscaloosa and Alabama as a whole in a very positive way, and that's important to remember.
It's therefore equally important to remember that in the past and even today, many people can't fully participate in what the school has to offer, or that Alabama governor George Wallace tried to prevent the desegregation of the University of Alabama in 1963, and that seven years before that, Autherine Lucy was run off of campus by a mob and then subsequently expelled because the university said that it couldn't provide her with a safe learning environment. Lucy finally got her degree, but not until the 1980s when Alabama finally overturned her expulsion.
I don't point these things out to rip on Alabama, or to absolve Ohio or Ohio State of the often times really messed up things we've done. It's more to act as a reminder that we don't get better as people by forgetting the past or putting rose colored glasses on and humming Dixie. We have to confront the ugly things to understand the good, and be more like what we've promised ourselves to be.
Okay serious part's over, let's make with the jokes!
TRADITION
Alabama's got some pretty weird/unusual origin stories as far as their mascot and nicknames go, which I can respect. The SEC as a whole suffers from a pretty distinct lack of creativity when it comes to mascots but the Alabama Crimson Tide does not fall into this trap. Instead, they take their name from the title of a Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman move from the early 90s about submarines. Initially school officials considered the "Alabama Hunt for Red Octobers" but ultimately this was rejected because somebody really wanted Viggo Mortensen's autograph.
Actually it's more likely that it had to do with the team getting covered in red mud during a game in the 1920s that was luckily attended by a particularly florid sports editor. The elephant thing, which might also make zero sense to you, was also probably an invention of an overly excited writer's imagination, but the end result of that was for a while Alabama had elephants pretty dang much everywhere around the school, and even had them available for rides during homecoming. This was eventually stopped, probably because elephants are big, scary, and create tremendous amounts of poop, but overall it's a pretty neat story.
Alabama is also home to the Million Dollar Band, which isn't as good as the Best Damn Band In The Land (who is?), but has a considerably better nickname and this story:
The Million Dollar Band was named in 1922 after Alabama played Georgia Tech. Alabama football struggled during the year and lost to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 33-7. During the game, an Atlanta sports writer asked W. C. “Champ” Pickens, an Alabama alumnus, “You don’t have much of a team; what do you have?” Pickens responded, “A Million Dollar Band.”
Mmmm that's good copy.
FIGHT SONG
"Yea Alabama!" is a perfectly fine, old timey fight song that starts out sounding like it could be whistled by Steamboat Willie on the back of a canoe.
Yea, Alabama! Drown 'em Tide!
Okay, yes, fine, works well with the team name, I'll allow it.
Every 'Bama man's behind you;
Hit your stride!
Hmm yes okay, I see, I see, everything seems good so far.
Go teach the Bulldogs to behave,
Ah nice, like the imagery here, like training a wayward dog, excellent. Great way to diss your opponent.
Send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave!
WHAT?
Send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave!
Uhh...
Send the Yellow Jackets to a wat-
OKAY! Yes, I understand. Thank you. Murder people from Georgia Tech. It's so clear to me now. You're all psychopaths. The best part about this is that Alabama doesn't even play Georgia Tech all that much anymore, but they will kill them on sight.
The rest of the song is pretty innocuous.
And if a man starts to weaken,
That's a shame!
For 'Bama's pluck and grit
Have writ her name in crimson flame!
Fight on, fight on, fight on, men!
Remember the Rose Bowl we'll win then!
Go, roll to victory,
Hit your stride,
You're Dixie's football pride, Crimson Tide!
"Rah rah fight fight go team play your best murder anyone from ATL that looks at you funny play hard and clean you can do it okay let's goooooo TIDE!"
THE MACHINE
In 2000, Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker starred in a movie called The Skulls, which was supposed to be based on Yale's Skull and Bones society. The movie itself is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in my entire life, but the Joshua Jackson was America's heartthrob so 15 year old Johnny Ginter spent 107 minutes of his life sitting through it.
And much like The Skulls aspires to be a much better movie, The Machine aspires to be a much more important super duper secret organization than it actually is. The Machine is mostly made up of old Alabama alumni who try and keep things nice and old timey by allegedly interfering with student government elections and administrative hiring and so on. In other words, the same crap that alumni all across the country pull on a regular basis, just without the silly nickname.
Still, interference from The Machine is what is claimed to have gotten the entire student government shut down from 1992 to 1996, so good job, I guess?
LEAST EMBARRASSING ALUMNI
How about Morris Dees, whose legal tactics basically bankrupted the KKK in many parts of the south, leading to multi-million dollar settlements on behalf of the people that they harassed?
MOST EMBARRASSING ALUMNI
Probably this guy.
PAUL "BEAR" BRYANT
There's a lot to say about this guy, but to put it succinctly, Bear Bryant is, for better or for worse the absolute embodiment of everything that is Alabama football.
You probably know the stats. Over 300 wins. 15 bowl wins. Six of Alabama's 37 claimed national championships. I'm kidding of course, Alabama claims "only" 15 of those, and since five of those were from before the 1960s and another two were given to them before they lost their final game of the season, Bear Bryant can still legitimately own four of those. That's a whole damn lot even after attempting to be intellectually honest.
Because of that, Bear Bryant's influence will always hang over Alabama's program like a pall. A tough, stern man who died a month after retiring probably didn't quite anticipate becoming a cultural touchstone in the afterlife, what with houndstooth print essentially becoming the official state tartan of Alabama, Bryant represents to the Crimson Tide exactly what Woody Hayes represents to Ohio State fans. Except if he ever punched a player he was smart enough not to do it on live national television.
And maybe, ultimately, stuff like that is what separates Ohio State football from Alabama football.
Alabama holds on to its traditions and culture like grim death, in large part because of larger cultural attitudes in the south but also because no has ever really made them let go. There's always going to be an ever-dwindling but still influential group of people who think of the University of Alabama in a certain way, and will do quite a bit to keep it that way, in terms of both football and school.
Ohio State, for all its flaws, is not that. The Ohio State University has no allegiances to anything or anyone but winning. Make an off-color joke? Sorry, we love you, but bye. Lie to the NCAA about something incredibly dumb? Gone, thanks for the national championship. Don't fix something fast enough that we told you to fix? You're out, don't care how many YouTube hits you got.
Hopefully after reading this you get my impression as to why many Alabama fans might not understand that attitude towards things. Hell, even I do sometimes.
After all, it's tough, and cold, and harsh.
But it also kind of kicks ass.
