Alabama SI Cover Tournament: Sweet Win Alabama vs. What the Tornado Took

The Alabama SI Cover Tournament wraps up the second round with a high-profile matchup, featuring a win that changed the look of college football, against the tragedy that shook Tuscaloosa to its core.

It's Sweet Win Alabama, on the Crimson Tide's epic win against Florida in the 2009 SEC Championship Game, vs. the 2011 tornado.

The winner will be the final entry into the Sweet 16, as the 48- field single-elimination tournament will start zeroing in on determining a champion.

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.

Second round

All Things Bama Regional

Game 32: Sweet Win Alabama (Colin Peek) vs. What the Tornado Took (Javier Arenas)

Sweet Win Alabama

Story headline: Move Over, Gators

Subhead: The new king of the SEC is Alabama, which pushed around Florida on both sides of the ball and moved closer to its first national championship since 1992

Excerpt (by Austin Murphy): If you think it was unsporting and cruel for Alabama fans to cheer the sight of Tim Tebow's tears in the final minute of last Saturday's SEC title game, Terrence Cody asks for your understanding:

"We hear a lot about him being one of the most dominant players ever in college football," explained Cody, the Crimson Tide's terrific nose tackle. "We hear that all the time. For us to dominate him and do all that stuff to him, it meant a lot to us."

It meant more, if possible, to the houndstooth-rocking legions of Alabama faithful, a group of partisans whose pride in their program is matched only by their sense of entitlement. Yes, the Tide had won 21 SEC championships, but the most recent of those came a decade ago. True, 'Bama owns a dozen national championships, but the Tide has been stuck on that number for 17 years. By reducing Tebow to tears and otherwise bullying the defending national champions in a 32-13 drubbing in the Georgia Dome, Nick Saban's squad earned a spot in the BCS title game, to be played on Jan. 7 in the Rose Bowl. There Alabama will be favored over a Texas team sure to run out of the tunnel in a foul mood—a by-product of the month of abuse the Longhorns must now endure following their coyote-ugly victory over Nebraska in the Big 12 title game later on Saturday.

This was the long-awaited evening that would dispel the fog, clarifying the BCS landscape and bringing the Heisman picture into focus.

What the Tornado Took

Story headline: Terror, Tragedy and Hope in Tuscaloosa

Subhead: On April 27 the most devastating tornado in Alabama history cut nearly a mile-wide swath through the university town, killing 41. Crimson Tide athletes, haunted by the storm and its aftermath, work to heal a community that has always cheered them on as they try to put their own lives back together

Excerpt (by Lars Anderson): How do you tell the story of the deadliest tornado in the history of Alabama? As of Sunday, 41 were confirmed dead—including six students from the University of Alabama—and hundreds injured in Tuscaloosa and Tuscaloosa County alone. (A total of 238 people were killed by more than 60 tornadoes that ravaged the state on April 27.) But these raw numbers can't begin to account for the damage. Nearly every resident in the town of 90,000 has trouble sleeping, and when they do close their eyes and drift away, most are tormented by please-God-wake-me nightmares.

I live in Birmingham and from my front porch saw the same twister that decimated Tuscaloosa pass five miles to the north. Debris with Tuscaloosa markings—letters, business cards, pictures—fell in my neighborhood, which is 60 miles from T-town. My dreams, too, have been haunted by the images of destruction and despair I've seen in Tuscaloosa, where I taught a sportswriting class at the university this spring. None of my 14 students were physically harmed—though it took days of frantic texting and e-mailing to verify that as cellphones and Internet connections failed throughout Alabama—but the storm continues to swirl inside of them, deepening their emotional scars.

"The tornado cut a six-mile path through here that was a half mile to a mile wide," says Tuscaloosa mayor Walt Maddox as he looks at the ruins of a grocery store where his mother took him shopping as a boy. "Fifteen thousand people here were in the path of this thing. The enormity of it all can swallow you."

The most iconic structure in the state, Bryant-Denny Stadium, looms in the distance, dominating the battered T-town skyline. The tornado passed just a half mile south of the campus. "If it hits us," says Anthony Grant, the Crimson Tide men's basketball coach, "this place would have been shut down for several years. Who knows? Maybe longer."

Result

What the Tornado Took (Javier Arenas) def. Sweet Win Alabama (Colin Peek), 54.8-42.8 percent