ATLANTA — The Alabama football team, as usual, watched a movie the night before stepping into the ring for the first time this season.
It was a boxing movie.
“A great movie,” Nick Saban said.
Cinderella Man.
Thus inspired, Alabama went out and learned a great lesson. Like prize fighters, no two football teams are alike. If the 2009 Alabama team established anything in its debut Saturday night, it’s this: It’s not the 2008 team. Not yet. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
You can become the heavyweight champion of the world by floating like a butterfly or stinging like a bee, by knocking the other guy out early or beating him on points at the end.
It just doesn’t matter — as long as you land enough punches.
The 2009 Alabama football team landed more than enough to beat Virginia Tech 34-24 in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff and put itself in the same position as the 2008 team after one game.
With one win in the books and the promise of a lot more to come.
There was evidence aplenty Saturday night that this is a new team in crimson and white. For a while, it wasn’t good news.
Alabama won the toss. Instead of taking the ball, shoving it down Virginia Tech’s gullet, making the Hokies eat it and like it — as last year’s team would’ve — Alabama deferred.
The first time Alabama touched the ball, Alabama lined up in that fad of a formation known as the Wildcat. Or, in this case, the Wild Elephant. Running back Mark Ingram served as triggerman.
Imagine what guys like Antoine Caldwell were thinking.
Especially when a snap or two in that set went awry amid a flurry of self-inflicted wounds.
“In the first half,” Saban said, “we were not only punching them, we were punching ourselves.”
Last year’s Alabama team pulled no punches. It didn’t line up in any kind of Wild Thing because it didn’t have to. Last year’s team didn’t do much deferring or deceiving. It told the opponent what it was going to do, and did it.
Rudely and routinely.
That was then. Now, on the first play of the fourth quarter, one point shy on the scoreboard and one yard short of a first down, Alabama politely called a play-action pass.
Julio Jones, no doubt stunned by this turn of events, dropped it.
It was at that point that Alabama stopped fooling around.
For the remainder of the fourth quarter, with the exception of one lost series by the kick return team and the defense, Alabama started treating Virginia Tech like its own personal punching bag.
Greg McElroy started throwing like John Parker Wilson. Ingram started running like Glen Coffee. The offensive line started opening holes like …
Wait a minute. Let’s not get carried away.
Yet.
Unlike Clemson, last year’s opening sparring partner, Virginia Tech didn’t have to be carried out of the ring on a stretcher.
But Tech’s legs did look a little wobbly at the final bell.
So it took a little longer, against a stronger opponent, to take the upper hand, but the 2009 Alabama football team did something the 2008 team didn’t.
Even if just for one game, this team overcame adversity and finished strong. See Cinderella Man.
“I think we showed some of that character,” Saban said.
If this team makes as much progress from the first game to the last as it made from the first quarter to the final whistle, it just might play its final game in Pasadena – and be the last team standing.
Physics is starting to kick my tail, I just had to take a 40/100 on a homework. We have a test next Tuesday, I don’t know how I will manage that. We will see!
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Homework is piling up for me now, especially in physics. I finally finished today the homework that was assigned last week. All the problems take a long time and i am impatient when it comes to thinking and trying to figure out the answer. It looks like it will difficult class to overcome, but I do not like to give up. I am right now loving my english teacher she is great, we read a few short stories in there, but she is easy going and is cool. My biology class started today online, I still don’t know how i am going to manage that. I’ll have to figure something out.
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