A great ending to a wonderful season! Looking forward to Tide football 2006. Now get started on your next book. A lot of us can hardly wait!
Mar3

I thought that game was gonna kill me. Christenson has an amazing knack for getting the game-winners through even if he has a not so stellar rest of the game. This group of upperclassmen really did deserve to go out on a great season and a great win like that. I won't say more, since the crew doing the game beat this topic into the ground.

A phenomenal end to an amazing season.

Roll Tide and Happy New Year,

Craig

And to make oh so sweet - Cow College is humiliated by Wisconsin. And I was just listening to a Finebaum repeat from last week where Ben Cook and some other yokel predicted a NC run for API in 2006. HA ha! Maybe Tub should focus on coaching rather than making Tshirts.

I've been trying to think of a good T shirt to riposte the Fear the Thumb thing. How about:

API School of Veterinary Medicine: Where Tigers have Thumbs

RJYH,

Congrats on the win. I ended up going to the game. It was sooo typical Alabama football. I kept telling the Tech fans that I went with that I've been watching this kind of football (close to the vest, don't hurt yourself, super tough D, etc.) for 20 years (since the Bear left and with him the wishbone).

Great sketch of the winning kick. From the 40-yard line 18 row seats on the east side we were in, when it left the ground the TEch fans all gasp in anticipation only to have the ref raise his hands.

Couple questions: Why didn't DJ Hall (#22) play more? Was he hurt? And I thought #84 was more focal point usually but other players seemed to be in there more #81 and #5 (who's soo small).

Some Tech fans around me asked what the post game song (Hey Raiders. Hey Raiders. We just beat the hell out of you. Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer give 'em hell Alabama) was. When I described it, they seemed a little put off - thought it was poor sportsmanship. I haven't seen UT lose to Bama in person since 92 - I don't remember that cheer although I heard it on the TV this year when you guys beat the Vols in Tuscaloosa. Is it something new - eg last 10 or 15 years?

Anyway - congrats on your win and 10 win season. Will be interesting to see what the Tide puts on the field next year at QB in particular. Looking at the roster/starting lineup - looks like lots of underclassmen.

Congratulations on the victory. I thought the kick was blocked and went through at first, but it wasn't blocked and it was a work of art. Another SEC triumph, too bad Auburn screwed things up today and took Wisconsin for granted.

Today I saw what was without question the single ugliest successful field goal attempt dating back to Rutgers-Princeton in 1869...but there are no style points, and a win is a win. The defense was incredible today.

And I can't seem to find the bowl score for UT...Can anybody help me find out where they got invited and how they did???? ;-)

U-G-L-Y you ain't got no alibi it's ugly. Hey an ugly "W" is still a "W". As for the UT bowl score I saw one on the ESPN ticker that it was Fulmer 125 Pastries 0 in the first ever Krisy Kreme Classic.On a related note I think Wing Nut knows what to do with that "thumb" now.

Just two quotes...
The first from NFL Tuesday Morning QB pundit Gregg Easterbrook. A bit length, but worth the read:

"Pablo Fuentes of Bend, Ore., was among numerous readers to flag this well-worth-reading New York Times Magazine article about Texas Tech and its pass-wacky coach Mike Leach. It's a tremendous piece, though the writer, Moneyball author Michael Lewis, whose sports forte is baseball, presents as Leach ideas some tactics that have been used by others before. (For instance, Texas Tech rarely fields a tight end; during the "run and shoot" fad of 15 years ago, Atlanta, Detroit, Houston and other NFL teams played without a tight end. Leach tries to increase the total number of plays his offense runs in a game; when the Bills went no-huddle in 1990, one of the goals was to increase the number of plays run.) I did not know the sociology of Texas Tech -- Lewis reports most of its players were passed over for scholarship offers at the University of Texas and Texas A&M, higher-status schools. Naturally this underdog factor causes sympathy for the Red Raiders. But bad sportsmanship is bad whether it comes from the favorite or the underdog, and Leach is a bad sport. Lewis describes Leach frantically trying to score more points when already ahead late by insurmountable margins, including calling a timeout with 23 seconds remaining, ahead 56-17, hoping to get one more touchdown. That for me neutralizes the respect Leach might otherwise win for his unorthodox ideas on such issues as line splits and conditioning. College coaches are supposed to be teachers. Leach appears to be teaching his charges is to be poor sports, which will not serve them well in later life. Lewis describes Leach as unpopular among fellow coaches, attributing this to their jealously over Leach's innovative thinking. Surely that's a factor -- the stodgy always resent the original -- but it sounds to me like Leach deserves to be unpopular."

Next, from the subject of the previous piece:

“It didn’t look very good when it left his foot,” Tech coach Mike Leach said. “I don’t know what you guys [the media] thought. But I had high hopes for it not being good at that point.”

Is it possible that football gods exist and lifted that quacker of a kick higher because TT spent most of the season running up the score?
I hope so

Always works out like that. Team runs up a big score against sub-par opposition and convinces people that they must be really good. The quality of the Big 12 plummets after the first two or three, and when you factor in the two (TWO!) games against I-AA teams, anybody with a pulse should have been able to tell that TT was a fraud. If Bama had any kind of an offense left, this would have been a laugher.

TT's offense is a gimmick, like the Utah spead-option or the wishbone at Navy and Air Force. If you only get a week to prepare, it might catch you out. If the opponent has a month to watch film and prepare, then you'd better have something else to offer.

See my blog...I muttered "overtime" even when the kick went through. And I loved the reaction by the officials. (Holy cow, did that REALLY make it?)

Up 56-17, calling a timeout with 23 seconds left? That's the type of stuff I do in NCAA Football 2006 on the PS2. Gotta make sure my Heisman candidate breaks the NCAA rushing record, you know.

To Bob and Ed who perpetuate a perception that Tide fans cannot read a Vols post without immediately insult Fulmer/Vols even when the Vol posts what I thought was a congratulatory note with a couple of legit questions: Two words - Logan Young.

To the rest of the Tide fans that looked like they had a good time at the Cotton Bowl and to Brodie Croyle who had a storybook ending to his injury-filled career - Congrats. Other than one game a year, the SEC benefits when Bama is good.

"BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE"!

"FEAR" THE CHEESE!

Wisconsin smacked Auburn and Alabama won.

ROLL TIDE!!!!

Thanks to some new friends at UA, I managed to get a 30-YL field-level view of The Duck. The Tech fans on the other side yelled like it was off, but when the refs raised their arms, it was pure joy. Funny thing -- both the gal I was hanging out with at the game and my mother back in Virginia went to the bathroom at the same time. So, women that know me have to be in the bathroom at clutch moments for the Tide. Henceforth, another weird superstition is born.