Alabama SI Cover Tournament: Raising Alabama vs. That Championship Season
It's the first four regional finals in the Alabama SI Cover Tournament, featuring Nick Saban vs. Gene Stallings.
Raising Alabama profiled the coach after he arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007.
That Championship Season features the 1992 national championship ... which didn't appear on the subsequent cover of Sports Illustrated.
With the game played in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, the next issue wasn't due to hit newsstands until more than a week later, which was deemed too long, so the decision was made to go with Jim Valvano's fight with cancer.
Thus, the creation of commemorative editions.
Both commemorative covers are included here, Gene Stallings and Derrick Lassic. It's a dual-cover entry.
BamaCentral is holding a 48-field single-elimination tournament to determine the best Alabama Sports Illustrated cover, and we're down to the last eight.
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.
Nick Saban Regional Final
Game 41: Raising Alabama (Nick Saban) vs. That Championship Season
Raising Alabama
Story headline: In the Nick of Time
Subhead: Fed up with mediocrity and losing to Auburn, the Alabama faithful welcome Nick Saban as a coach tough enough to bring back the glory of the Bear
Excerpt (by Rick Bragg): They say college football is religion in the Deep South, but it's not. Only religion is religion. Anyone who has seen an old man rise from his baptism, his soul all on fire, knows as much, though it is easy to see how people might get confused. But if football were a faith anywhere, it would be here on the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And now has come a great revival.
The stadium strained with expectation. The people who could not find a seat stood on the ramps or squatted in the aisles, as if it were Auburn down there, or Tennessee, and when the crowd roared, the sound really did roll like thunder across the sky. A few blocks away 73-year-old Ken Fowler climbed to his second-story terrace so he could hear it better and stood in the sunlight as that lovely roar fell all around him. He believes in the goodness and rightness of the Crimson Tide the way people who handle snakes believe in the power of God, but in his long lifetime of unconditional love, of Rose Bowl trains, Bobby Marlow up the middle and the Goal Line Stand, he never heard anything like this. His Alabama was playing before the largest football crowd in state history, and playing only itself. "We had 92,000," he said, "for a scrimmage."
It felt good. It felt like it used to feel.
High Tide in Alabama
Story headline: The End of a Run
Subhead: With a resounding 34-13 Sugar Bowl victory, Alabama put a stop to Miami's 29-game winning streak and won its first national title since 1979
Excerpt (by Austin Murphy): Maybe the old man can finally get some rest. Three coaches and one decade to the month after the death of Bear Bryant, Alabama won its 12th national title and its first in 13 years. After biting their lips for a week while the Miami Hurricanes woofed and howled their contempt for the Crimson Tide, the Alabama players dominated and, perhaps more satisfying, muzzled the defending national champions with a 34-13 win in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's. Now that they can once again lay claim to college football's throne, perhaps Tide fans, who have been known to pray for Bryant's resurrection, will let the Bear lie in peace.
Pay no attention to Alabama coach Gene Stallings's stubborn refusal in the days leading up to the game to concede that his team was an underdog. This was an upset of magnificent proportions. Crimson Tide quarterback Jay Barker could not be counted on to pass his team to victory, and, in fact, he would complete only four of 13 throws for 18 yards and suffer two interceptions. Likewise, the outside running game would be an exercise in futility. As long as Jessie Armstead, Micheal Barrow and Darrin Smith have started at linebacker, no team has been able to turn the corner on Miami.
Alabama would have to run between the tackles—football's truck route—behind a smallish, undistinguished line that, until recently, 'Bama fans had maligned. At 6'3" and 250 pounds, center Tobie Sheils is slight for a major-college lineman. Left guard George Wilson shot off half of his left foot in a 1989 hunting accident. And six nights before the game, right tackle Roosevelt Patterson was verbally assaulted in the French Quarter. "You must be an offensive lineman, you fat, sloppy ——," Miami linebacker Rohan Marley had shouted at the amply padded, 290-pound Patterson.
Chalk one up for the shrimp, the gimp and the blimp. Behind them, Derrick Lassic rushed for 135 yards on 28 carries, the most yards a back gained against the Hurricanes this season. "They said we were one-dimensional," said Sheils after the game. "We are one-dimensional. Sometimes you only need one dimension."
Result
Stallings/Lassic (1992 title) def. Raising Alabama (Nick Saban), 51.6 to 48.4 percent
