A picture really is worth a thousand words.
So...ummm...yeah...well...
That officially goes down as the worst loss of the Shula era (and that's really saying something.) That was worse than Northern Illinois and Hawai'i in '03 because those were fairly decent teams and we were in an unbelievably bizarre situation. Mississippi State '06 is a dreadful team though. Their previous two wins were over UAB (who has one of the worst coaches in D1) and Jacksonville State (a 1-AA team.) That is some pretty sorry company to be in. It also means that Tulane and Kentucky accomplished something we couldn't.
This guy showed up looking for Alabama's season on Saturday and found it.
Back when this blog started in June, we asked what Bama's regular season record would be and here are the results. Only one person picked 6-6, which is what it's looking like it'll be. Eight people picked 7-5 and 19 people picked 8-4 (myself included.) I guess 6-6 will send us to the Liberty Bowl or to Shreveport to risk having a losing season (CFN currently projects us to play Oklahoma State in Shreveport.) Just think how much worse this season would've been had we played a decent out of conference schedule. CFN's most recent ranking (10/29) of all 119 D1 teams finds our four OOC opponents in the following places: Hawai'i (31), Duke (88), FIU (117) and La-Monroe (118). Let's be honest, Duke at 88 is waaaaaaaaaaay off base too.
The 20 yard line is Alabama's kryptonite.
Does anyone know where we can locate the redzone statistics of all D1 teams? I'd love to know where we rank (well, I wouldn't love the ranking, just the knowledge of the ranking.)
Besides the Hawai'i game, Bryant-Denny Stadium has been deader than a doornail all season. Field goals are a foregone conclusion inside the 20 (attempting them is anyway, making them...not so much) and the impotence of the offense just puts a malaise over the crowd. I've heard that the Big House in Michigan is the quietest 100,000+ seater in the country. BDS must be the quietest in the 90K-100K range. I can't blame the fans either. There's been very little to cheer for all season long. Inept play calling, stalls in the redzone, getting taken to overtime by Ole Miss, getting embarrassed by Mississippi State, getting taken to the wire by Vanderbilt and having Duke hang around most of the game, trailing FIU for a while and giving up 100 yards rushing to La-Monroe's tailback don't exactly fire the crowd up.
At this point, I'm just hoping that we don't get humiliated by LSU and Auburn. Hopefully we can sneak out a win against one of them to salvage some pride. So, how long 'til the 2007 season kicks off?