A-Day Media Wrap-Up: The Fans Are the Story

by Nico2.0 on Apr 23, 2007 5:11 AM CDT in Football Comment 1 comment

92,000+ for practice

The incredible turnout for A-Day has been receiving a hefty amount of media attention. While the fans are getting most of the attention, there's still a lot to talk about football-wise...

To say that Lindy's hit the nail on the head with their prediction about A-Day would be a bit of an understatement:

The spring football game to end all spring football games will be played next Saturday in Tuscaloosa when the Alabama Crimson Tide winds up its spring drills with the annual A-Day Game. Bryant-Denny Stadium on the Alabama campus holds 92,138 fans. It might not be enough.

The Associated Press story is, of course, all over the place and over at ESPN, the story has the video that appeared on SportsCenter as well.

Birmingham News:

One good thing to see from the White team on Saturday was the ability to seal the deal:

What the crowd saw on the last full drive was exactly what the coaches could have hoped.
Leading 17-13 with 6:19 left, the first-team offense (White) took the ball and went on a 15-play, 77-yard drive, capped by a 28-yard field goal by Leigh Tiffin. It essentially ended the game.

"We do a lot in practice, maintaining drives, and that's one of the things Coach Saban has preached with his Fourth Quarter Program," said White team center Antoine Caldwell, who received the Dwight Stevenson Award as the game's most valuable lineman. "Having that mental toughness to close out games. We did a great job on that last drive and all spring."

Mobile Press-Register:

Perhaps our penalty parties will be over this fall. Only one penalty (a defensive offside) was assessed at the game. Hopefully Coach Saban's "Fourth Quarter" program will have the squad in better shape and less prone to mental errors.

Mal Moore was obviously pleased with the turnout on Saturday. He should be happy because the Saban hire probably saved his job. Anybody else remember him being booed last year?

"The crowd's still coming in. I just can't say enough about the fans and how supportive they've been. This speaks volumes for these people, the university and coach Saban. It's unbelievable."

Huntsville Times:

Coach Saban chimes in with some fantastically smart-ass remarks to the media regarding Jimmy Johns winning the "I Like to Practice" award:

He practices good all the time," Saban said when asked about it after the game. "He didn't practice because he didn't go to class. I knew you all would have a hard time figuring that one out. They're not related. If the guy practices good and he doesn't go to class and I don't let him practice, what does that have to do with practicing? I knew that would get you."

Now for some stuff from places you wouldn't expect...

Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Columnist Darren Epps says that the 92,000+ fans at A-Day ends the argument on which SEC team has the most passionate fans. It's great that the column comes from an out of state paper.

Almost every SEC school boasts tradition, huge attendance figures and exuberant tailgaters who arrive on Wednesday for a Saturday game. There's no statistic to anoint one school definitively the most passionate about football.

Well, until this one: 92,138.

The argument is over. There were 92,138 Alabama fans packed into Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday for a televised spring game, and officials had to turn people away in the second quarter.

This article (also from the Chattanooga paper) has a bunch of great quotes from the players about how astonished they were by the fans. My favorite was from Bobby Greenwood:

"I had heard there were going to be 80,000, but I thought everybody was overshooting and being optimistic. When I came out of the tunnel and looked around, it was unbelievable. Then they announced they were opening that east wing, so we really had to focus on what we were doing that much more, because it was hard not to look around."

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If you have any tips or links to other articles from non-Alabama or non-national sources, please email us at rollbamaroll at gmail dot com.

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There is simply no way that we could talk about a practice game this much and not post this clip: