INTERESTING READ...............

Scott Ferrell - Shrevport Times



The University of Alabama claims 12 national football championships, 21 Southeastern Conference championships and soon-to-be 54 bowl appearances.

Alabama's tradition is part of the fabric of Tuscaloosa. There's Paul Bryant Drive. The Paul "Bear" Bryant Museum. There are even hound's tooth baseball caps for sale.

Alabama's deep tradition, though, creates something of a two-edged sword. It helps the Tide in recruiting, hiring coaches and winning games. It also raises expectations to an almost unrealistic level.

"Alabama is one of those schools where the tradition runs deep," Crimson Tide interim head coach Joe Kines says. "To get to be a part of that is something only a few people get to do."

That number is growing.

The Crimson Tide team traveling to Shreveport later this month for the PetroSun Independence Bowl against Oklahoma State will be without head coach Mike Shula, a casualty of unmet expectations after a 6-6 season.

When Alabama hires Shula's replacement, it will mark the school's fifth head coach since the turn of the century.

"I think the 'Alabama family', while well-intentioned, has developed a pattern of knee-jerk reaction to what is perceived as being a weakness when they are not sure if it is or it isn't," CBS Sports' Tim Brando says.

"At some point, really good teams in the SEC are going to have .500 or sub-.500 seasons. You've got to accept that. They're living in this fog, this era when there were no scholarship limitations and they could get just about any player they wanted."

That era was when the Bear roamed the sidelines from 1958 to 1982. During that time, Bryant won 323 games. He won six national championship and 14 SEC titles.

Alabama was so dominant in the 1970s that the football program even drew the attention of the rock music industry.

Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" included the lines, "They got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues."

Since Bryant's death following the 1982 season, the blues reached Tuscaloosa.

Alabama has won just three SEC championships and only one national title after Bryant.

The inability to replicate Bryant's feats have caused a revolving door of coaches.

Gene Stallings, one of Bear's Boys, lasted longer than any other Crimson Tide coach "" seven seasons. After Stallings retired following the 1996 season, Mike DuBose coached from 1997 to 2001. Dennis Franchione coached two seasons before leaving for Texas A&M. Mike Price never coached a game before being fired and Shula had four seasons before he was let go.

"You can't just say it's coaching when you've had that many coaches in that short of a period of time," Brando says.

There is nearly as much pressure on the players as it is the coaches.

"When I was a freshman, I wasn't used to it," Alabama running back Kenneth Darby said prior to the season.

Kines, though, says players embrace the Crimson Tide's tradition.

"If you're there (at Alabama), you understand it a little bit different. It's a situation where that is why guys come there.

"You get to be a part of that program. You get to be a part of that tradition. It goes deep. It's not a surface thing. You listen to coaches all across the country and they're talking about building a tradition, building this, that and the other. What is there (in Tuscaloosa) is there. What you've got to do every day is be as good as you can."

Says Darby, "It doesn't take long though before you're around so much that it isn't as big a deal."

Fifty-four bowl games. Twenty-one SEC championships. Twelve national titles.

Tradition is still a big deal in Tuscaloosa. The trick is making the tradition work for the Tide and not against it.