[FONT="]"When I was a little boy, the men in my family would go bird hunting on Saturday afternoons. But the birds often went unshot. The hunters would find the Alabama game on the radio, and there in the fields of broom sage, their good dogs milling restless around their feet, they would stand at the open doors of their trucks and hang on every call, perishing one play, resurrecting the next. I can still hear it."[/FONT]
[FONT="]- Mal Moore (Alabama Athletics Director)
Here, just hours before two old blood Southern adversaries are set to reel forth and make war on one another for sporting glory I just wanted to pause for a moment to reflect on the reason that we are all here today.
That love of Alabama Crimson Tide football, how we came to be here, and why it matters just so damn much.
My first encounters were very similar to Moore's. Though we never stopped our proceedings in the wood I would sit in between my Father and my Grandfather on the bench seat of an ancient blue Ford Ranger ( my Grandfather had specifically requested the bench seat so that I may ride in just that spot) and listen to the radio call undulate in and out as we bounced home at dusk over the unpaved logging roads and out of the thick longleaf pine.
My Father and Grandfather were not and are not exuberant men. Successful plays were often met with silence and the creaking of leaf springs and at most only an "Ah-Ha!" escaped from my very frail Grandfather.
For me, Alabama football was always a part of a greater whole. It was tied up in the land, it was tied up in the people - it ran through the family. It was truly heritage in every sense of the word: the team a living personification of the state's attitude toward adversity.
I can smell the truck interior and see the fading tree line.
I can still hear it too, Mal. And I'll never forget the sound.[/FONT]
[FONT="]- Mal Moore (Alabama Athletics Director)
Here, just hours before two old blood Southern adversaries are set to reel forth and make war on one another for sporting glory I just wanted to pause for a moment to reflect on the reason that we are all here today.
That love of Alabama Crimson Tide football, how we came to be here, and why it matters just so damn much.
My first encounters were very similar to Moore's. Though we never stopped our proceedings in the wood I would sit in between my Father and my Grandfather on the bench seat of an ancient blue Ford Ranger ( my Grandfather had specifically requested the bench seat so that I may ride in just that spot) and listen to the radio call undulate in and out as we bounced home at dusk over the unpaved logging roads and out of the thick longleaf pine.
My Father and Grandfather were not and are not exuberant men. Successful plays were often met with silence and the creaking of leaf springs and at most only an "Ah-Ha!" escaped from my very frail Grandfather.
For me, Alabama football was always a part of a greater whole. It was tied up in the land, it was tied up in the people - it ran through the family. It was truly heritage in every sense of the word: the team a living personification of the state's attitude toward adversity.
I can smell the truck interior and see the fading tree line.
I can still hear it too, Mal. And I'll never forget the sound.[/FONT]
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