copyright Celine Sparks, 2024
We had us a coach. We weren’t sure at first. When Alabama hired Nick Saban, we kept watching the reel over and over on the news where he threw his headset down in a Miami Dolphins shirt, and did an imitation of the Tasmanian Devil in DFW rush hour traffic. We were like, whaaaaa?
We were used to the Bear Bryant legacy, where you tilt your houndstooth brim like a gentleman, sliding another win under your belt like sliding in sock feet on a just-waxed floor. Winning went down as easy as cornbread drenched in buttermilk. This was Alabama.
There was no stomping or jumping up and down and throwing headsets in our repertoire of coach behavior. And yeah, he came to us with a national championship in his resume, but we kind of quoted that verse about, “What good thing can come out of LSU?” This was Alabama.
Some of those rich people from the Tuscaloosa country club waved a figure in front of him that made the rest of us choke on our Fruit Loops, he took it, and we had us a coach.
It didn’t take us long to know there must have been a budget line for three or four headset deaths a game. We were okay with it – particularly because I was never billed personally – He was winning. Pretty soon we had pictures of him on our mousepads, magnets on our dishwasher, and if we put a hand in a bag to pull out a snack, it had an endorsement from St. Nick on it.
We found it endearing that he was irritated with the press, and sent reporters to the locker room for fifty push-ups because they asked unintelligent questions. When Alabama won, he was as happy as Grumpy Cat, listing all the things that were done wrong by our offensive line, our defensive line, our special teams, and we were pretty sure, our cheerleaders.
When the players did what they were supposed to, he gave them bruh pats, whether they were successful or not. But if they were careless in the slightest, well, there went another headset.
He mellowed a little over the years. We saw a sweet and gentle spirit within him at Thanksgiving dinners with his players, when he talked about Miss Terry, and with his involvement with a foster care organization. And not just anybody can get along with ducks and goats in commercials. It turns out a pretty good crimson giant can come out of LSU.
Pretty good indeed. His record stands at 201 and 29. We’ll take it. We’ve been spoiled by it. When you find that you’ve dozed off in all your Alabama regalia with tailgate food sliding off your plate and you wake up to phone cameras in your face during the national championship game against Notre Dame, your team is that good.
We’ll get us another guy. This is Alabama. The commentators will discuss and speculate and bring up ancient stats from the Roman Colosseum around the clock on every channel until we long to hear an opera on educational programming instead. We don’t know who it will be, but I’d rather step on a snail barefooted than have his job. The shoes he has to fill are colossal.
They’re elephant sized.
Roll Tide!!!!