Expanded Alabama thoughts ...

By Tim Cottrell
Sports Writer/Designer
Published: September 30, 2008

I got in just a bit too much of a hurry when writing today’s column and didn’t realize until later I had left a lot of what I wanted to say on the table.

One of the things I really wanted to go into was why it’s different this time when people - myself included - are saying that Bama is back ... again.

That narrative has come along three previous times, and, strangely, in three-year cycles.

In 1999, in the third year of the Mike DuBose era, the Tide won the SEC and went 10-3, then started the next year ranked No. 3 in the nation.

We all know what happened next, but what a lot of people don’t know is exactly why.

The coaching staff under DuBose was absolutely disintegrating from about May of 1999 up to the point they were all fired in November 2000. There was in-fighting, no leadership and a pretty bad lack of planning.

What they had in 1999, however, was leadership. But from the players.

Guys like Shaun Alexander, Chris Samuels, Miguel Merritt and Cornelius Griffin, among others, kept together the team and made sure a lot of talented youngsters played to their potential.

Those four I mentioned were also all seniors, and when they left that year so did any semblance of stability. The disjointed mess you saw in 2000 was a direct result of all that.

So then DuBose was gone, and in came Dennis Franchione.

Franchione probably would’ve succeeded there (although its hard to say that after the Disaster in College Station (it deserves caps), but his 10-3 record in 2002 was helped a bit by not playing Florida, catching Arkansas when they were struggling early and facing Tennessee and LSU teams on the road that underachieved pretty badly that season. Plus they had absolutely horrible Vanderbilt and Mississippi State teams on the schedule.

And then Franchione bolted, and on came the fallout from the NCAA sanctions.

Enter Mike Shula (by way of Mike Price), who is about as bad an offensive coach as has ever laid trod an NFL sideline, becoming a head coach for the first time at any level at a premiere college with a rabid fanbase with high expectations.

Needless to say, things didn’t go well most of the time.

But for one magical year in 2005, things clicked.

Brodie Croyle was finally healthy and living to his potential, Ken Darby was running all over the place and Tyrone Prothro was making the impossible look routine.

And then Shula did something stupid (big surprise, I know).

Leading Florida, 31-3, and facing fourth down in Gator territory in the fourth quarter, rather than, you know, punt, Shula elected for a deep pass to Prothro and when his leg snapped so did Bama’s chances.

Sure, they won four more regular season games after that and got to No. 3 in the polls, but it was largely on the wings of a strong defense.

And then LSU and Auburn exposed the Tide for what they were and that was that.

And that brings us to now.

For the first time since Gene Stallings was forced out of town, the Tide has both a good coach and a strong coach. There are some differences.

Franchione was a good coach, but he wasn’t strong enough to deal with the internal pressures (there are many) or the external pressures from the fanbase.

DuBose and Shula were both ill-equipped in both areas.

Nick Saban is a good coach (it’s been proven before he got here, and he may be proving it even more right now) and a strong coach. Strong because A) he welcomes the kind of expectations Alabama fans have and B) he’s already been given total control of the football program and really doesn’t care enough to bother himself with the athletic department politics.

As we’re seeing right now, he has a team that’s really not close to being the total package playing the best football in the country right now, and has an inside track to a 10-0 start heading to LSU.

Pitfalls exist, like the home dates with Ole Miss and Mississippi State and the trip to Tennessee, but Bama should be able to get through those.

And if they can go to Baton Rouge and win, as crazy as it is to say, there may not be any stopping this team.

And I really can’t believe I’m typing this right now.