I Keep Trying To Tell All Of You

Many times in this space I've tried to explain the passion that the state of Alabama has for college football. They care about high school football inasmuch as it pertains to where the best players will be playing college football. They care about professional football inasmuch as which team their former stars play for.

I grew up in that culture. Hence, I "get it." I follow college football...with borderline obsessive passion. It's pretty much a hobby. One example: two months ago, I drove 24-hours--round trip--to watch a 3-hour football game with my daughter. She wanted (dare I say needed?) to see what all the hullaballoo was about. Mission accomplished. There was hullaballoo and we were right there in the thick of it.

Another recent example: My mother wanted her ashes scattered at Bryant-Denny Stadium. This wasn't considered odd by anyone we knew. My entire family was there to trespass and scatter...they cheered when I did it. Mission accomplished.

Most of you likely don't know that the head coach of The Dark Side (The University of Alabama) was fired this week. You can't go 6-6 and lose to Auburn for the 5th straight year. Went 10-2 in 2005? No matter. You went 6-6 and lost to Auburn. Here's $4 million (yes, the buyout of his contract was $4 million), thanks for trying, now go away.

People don't raise an eyebrow at that in Alabama.

So you shouldn't be surprised by this little bit of information I got this morning from Alabama's newspaper page (all the state papers get together to make a pretty good web page):

"Al.com recorded 8.2 million page views Monday, including 4.6 million in its talk forums. That performance outpaced milestones of 4.9 million views to 5.2 million views for such events as Hurricane Ivan, the Huntsville school bus crash and the day talk escalated that Shula might be replaced by Nick Saban of the Miami Dolphins."

Just one more example to try to help you all understand why I'm so into college football...