Bill Battle is now an official part of the University of Alabama Athletic Department, the REC made it official tonight. Only kidding about making anything official but it was an interesting evening listening to him speak.

He started with how all of this happened, AD job, and how shocking it was when he received the initial call asking him to take the job. Paul Bryant Jr made the call and what a positive way for the University to ask him to come to Bama. He said it took a week of constant turmoil inside of him on whether to accept the job or not. He said his biggest problem was whether he could actually do the job, even though he was a businessman.

Bill also talked about his playing days in high school at West End in Birmingham and how bad their teams were then. They never won many games when he played but they did go 4-4-1 his senior year and the Birmingham News thought they had a great year. Regardless of his team's record, he was good enough to get a scholarship offer from Bear Bryant along with Butch Wilson, Leroy Jordan, Cotton Clark, Jimmy Sharpe, and some others, but what a team this class turned out to be at Bama. He then talked about his job as AD and what a challenge it has been so far. He explained that there are 21 sports teams at Bama and only two of them are profittable entities and it is his job to get them all in the profittable category. There were some of the other coaches in attendance, Anthony Grant, Sara Patterson, Jay Seawell, and some assistants of the coaches. Bill is very proud of Jay Seawell and the mens golf team, because they earned him his first National Championship as an Athletic Director.

I was anxious for the Q&A session to start because I had a couple of issues that I was going to ask about, but some of the others in the crowd were thinking like me. I wanted to know what is the status of the baseball field and is anything going to be done about student absenteeism at the football games. He said that they have in hand the plans for the new baseball complex but have not not presented it to the board as of yet. This will be a very expensive job and there will have to be some big donations to cover the cost. He also said it is looking as though the baseball field will not be moved from it's present location. As far as the student tickets issue, he said they have been looking very hard at that situation and there will be some rules changes for the students and tickets this year.

It was a great evening and I wish you all could have been there to enjoy as I did. I could sense that Bill is very proud and honored to be back on campus and his wife seemed to be just as happy. Roll Tide!!

So because of my job, I got to go to Athens, TN for their chamber dinner. CNS was the guest speaker. He was asked over a year ago. He agreed and boy did this thing turn into a pep rally for Bama fans. They have had many celebs come for this dinner. But this one sold out. 1500 people at 50 bucks a pop. Bama fans came from all over to listen to Coach.
Anyway my story...we as media members were not allowed under the tent and also were not allowed to talk to CNS prior to event. All that changed when he saw all of us waiting. He gave his time to us and the thing I took away was how genuine he was with his thoughts. The questions were rather easy...being in vile country did he want to kick the vile? He took the high road. He was asked about what he was going to talk about, then it hit me. He said, he came from a town the size of Athens and how important something like this was to him. He said sometimes you do things for the right reasons. They really made me think. He was there to give his time. Time is very important, we would all like more of it. It was truly an honor to hear him speak.
Lastly, there were some vile fans there who had the smarts to just listen. Not often do you get to hear about how to make yourself better and be motivated. People just wanted to hear from a winner. Finally his speaking fee was going directly to the Nick's Kids foundation. He didn't pocket a dime from it.
All in all it was a good night and I didn't mind working late overtime or not.
RTR everyone!

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We may have our own "Rudy" if this kid sticks with it.

Coach Burton Burns, running backs coach, was the guest speaker at our REC meeting last night and I really enjoyed hearing him. This was my first time to hear him speak and I came away very impressed as he spoke of his earlier years when he played at Nebraska and then touched on his coaching journey that has ended at Alabama.

He, like the other Bama coaches, pretty much are out of the same mold as to explaining their job description and expressing their coaching mentality. Whether it's talking about what's happening on the playing field or making in home visits, Bama coaches are so professional when they speak to a group.

I was really impressed with his personal feelings of past players as he spoke so highly of Coffee, Upchurch, Ingram, and Richardson. He explained how these players developed into special players and were tremendous leaders of the team. He also is very high on Jalston Fowler, explaining that he plays and practices beyond the everyday expectations of a coach. Jalston wasn't the only player that he is very high though, Yeldon and Henry are on his list as some others.

The players have just returned from their home vacations and are beginning their preparations for fall practice. He had us all laughing as he called this the "Cochran Time". This is the time when the players work on their conditioning, mental and physical. The mental sessions are handled by professional motivators and the physical sessions are handle by Cochran.

It is also the time when the coaches start to feel out the players in search for those special players that will become the team leaders. He explained that these special players aren't just seniors on the team but are at each year level of the team.

He talked about last year's team in that it was a team probably not as blessed with the talent that the championship teams had in the previous years but was a team that worked their rear ends off and learned to win in the trenches, especially in the fourth quarter.

The team goals for this year is no different from the goals of past teams but how this team will achieve their goals will only be determined by the how these players approach this season. This is why they have the "Cochran Time" and motivators at this time of year, they want to be ready in those two aspects when the whisle blows for fall practice.

Needless to say, I soaked all of this football talk up last night because I know that it's not very long until fall practice starts and I couldn't be more ready for it to begin. Roll Tide!!  

Alabama has been blessed over the past years with some very good softball teams but still came up short of the big prize until last year. Last years team was an exceptional team that included lots of leadership from multiple players on the team. When I say leadership, I'm not talking about someone that likes to lead the cheers in the dugout. I'm talking about someone that the other players respect and trust and can go to them with their problems, regardless of whether their problems may be personal or softball related.

Bama started this year off in great fashion and winning was easy for them. They were traveling a lot and playing a very busy schedule, but a very busy schedule can sometimes backfire on you. Traveling and playing in some of the nastiest weather that I've seen in some years can really test your will to play at the top of your game. The bad weather wasn't just on the road games it was at home as well. Somehow I think that some of the players experienced some fatigue from this and their game began to suffer.

About midway through the season I saw a change in Jackie Traina. Jackie had been pitching great and her batting was the icing on the cake for her game performances. But all at once she started to struggle with her pitching, something that she had not experienced in her career at Alabama. Then her batting began to struggle and she lost some games that she would have normally won. This is when the team, as a whole, began to react to Jackie's failures, this was something that they were not used to seeing. Jackie had been pretty much invincible in her career at Bama but was now gettting knocked around as an average pitcher. This is when Bama needed someone on the team to pick up where Jackie had left off and become a hero of sort, someone that could rally the team with a great pitching performance or getting game winning hits in the last inning but none of this happened.

Slowly the team began to come apart at the seams. The conference schedule was much tougher than their non-conference games and every team that Bama played wanted to beat the National Champions. It seemed that when the team would lose it was due to so many mental mistakes, whether it was pitching, hitting, running the bases, or playing defense. They were making mistakes that good teams don't make and they were paying a big price for the mistakes, losing games.

Again I'll go back to what Bama needed to stop this downward spiral, it was  leadership. With Jackie Traina being unable to be relied on to win almost every game that she pitched, Bama had no one else who could be that leader that all of the players could depend on to win the big games. She was J-Train, the best player in the country. She could beat you with her bat or her pitching and she was the hero and leader of this team.

I doubt that Bama makes it to a Super Regional this year unless some things happen with this team. They have the players that are fully capable of winning another championship this year, when they play the way they are capable of playing. Can Jackie Traina right this ship, she can if she can pitch the way we all have seen her pitch in the past, but Jackie needs some help from her teammates. They need to become the leader of this team right now to help her get out of this nasty slump. There are some very good players on this team and right now they've got to become more than players, they've got to become those leaders and pick up the slack for their fallen hero and get her going again.

I've got my fingers crossed as the SEC tournament begins this week, just maybe some good things will happen for the team. ROLL TIDE!!

   

Another year, another trip to the NCAA Championships for the Tide Gymnastic team. This is our 31st year in a row to advance to the finals.

We blew away the competition with a 197.400. The next closest team was 196.400.


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