Alabama SI Cover Tournament: Bear vs. Too Much Bama

We go from one Bear Bryant cover, to another in a different regional in the Alabama SI Cover Tournament.

"The Bear" has the daunting task of facing a national championship cover, from Alabama's shutout win over LSU in New Orleans to capture the 2011 crown.

BamaCentral is holding a 48-field single-elimination tournament to determine the best Alabama Sports Illustrated cover.

Vote on Twitter (@BamaCentral) or Facebook (@AlabamaonSI). The voting goes 24 hours for each matchup and the result added to the original post on BamaCentral.

Sweet 16

Joe Namath Regional

Game 35: Bear vs. Too Much Bama

Bryant Goes For the Record

Story headline: 'I Do Love The Football'

Subhead: Bear Bryant says that unequivocally after 43 years of coaching and 314 wins, tying Stagg's record, which he can break against Auburn

Excerpt (by Frank Deford): The pigskin historian begins to sort through the mounds of evidence that are supposed to add up to the man who is identified as Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant. It is all there, in layers, by now a folk chronicle, each tale told and retold in nearly the same language every time, and all irrespective of relative importance, time or place: The Bear and his humble origins in Moro Bottom, near Fordyce, Ark.; The Bear at Alabama as "the other end" opposite the immortal Don Hutson; the tales of how The Bear got his name (accounts provided by every possible eyewitness, save perhaps the noble ursine itself); The Bear and the bowls; The Bear and the record—Amos Alonzo Stagg's 314 victories as a coach, which Bryant tied last Saturday with a 31-16 defeat of Penn State and could surpass next week against Auburn; The Bear that first hellish summer in Aggieland; The Bear returns to his Alabama; The Bear and his hat; The Bear and The Baron; The Bear walks on water (and other fables); the ages of The Bear.

By now, it is all so blurred, yet all so neat. The more one reads—the more one suffers through the same stuff from The Bear and his hagiographers—the more one understands a friend of The Bear's, a Tuscaloosa physician, who says, "That he mumbles really doesn't matter to me anymore, because by now, I always know what he is going to say, anyway."

Too Much Bama

Story headline: Absolutely Alabama

Subhead: In a defensive tour de force that featured just enough offensive punch (a touchdown, at last!), the Crimson Tide shut down LSU and left no doubt as to whom should be crowned national champion

Excerpt (by Austin Murphy): Alabama's 14th national championship, its second in three years, did more than remove the sting of that home loss to the Tigers on Nov. 5. The title was a balm and a gift to the thousands of residents of Alabama who lost property and loved ones in the tornadoes that ripped through the state on April 27. "This isn't a win just for us, but this is a win for Tuscaloosa and all of Alabama," said a teary Carson Tinker, the team's long snapper, who was with his girlfriend, Ashley Harrison, when she was swept up by a twister and thrown roughly 100 yards. Harrison died, her neck broken. "We've been through so much this year, and I'm at a loss for words to describe what I feel. Just happy."

BCS to the U.S.A.: You're welcome!

This, after all, was the matchup the entire nation clamored to see—with the exception of the roughly 80% of Americans who don't live in a state with an SEC school and don't affix, for instance, Bulldogs or Gators or Razorbacks magnets to their car doors. We've seen this movie before, went the thinking among non-SEC types, who pointed out that Alabama already had a crack at the Tigers and lost in the so-called Game of the Century, which was renamed upon its conclusion Field Goal Fest '11.

Among those eager for the rematch was SEC commissioner Mike Slive, who could rest assured, once the title game pairing was announced, that his conference was guaranteed its sixth straight national championship. (The bad news: An SEC team was now sure to lose in the title game for the first time in the 14-year history of the BCS.)

Result

Too Much Bama def. The Bear, 52.7-47.3 percent