http://www.postherald.com/sp072603.shtml
Can't we just play the games?
Commentary by TIM STEPHENS BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD
The calendar shows only 35 days remain until Alabama, Auburn, UAB and the rest of the state schools tee it up for another college football season. More than any other year in recent memory, the games can't get here soon enough.
It is not because of great expectations regarding the state teams although there's no question the hype is growing for the Auburn Tigers.
The sound of pads cracking against each other will be a welcome respite from the turmoil of the past offseason. It'll be nice to focus on the really important things on the football field like trying to sneak under Mike Shula's Iron Curtain at Alabama practices instead of court documents, lawsuits, conspiracy theories and backroom deals.
It used to be that the time between football seasons was reserved for discussion of recruiting. Remember when that little cottage industry was fun? That was before Albert Means went up for auction. But since then and since the end of last season's bowl games, fans in the state of Alabama have been slapped ad infinitum with scandals. And we thought it all was over when the NCAA stopped short of firing a bullet down the barrel of the gun?
Hardly.
Just since last December, we've had Dennis Franchione's love-em-and-leave-em exit from Alabama ... Mike Price's "It's Rollin' Baby!" saga .... Price suing Alabama and Sports Illustrated ... Former Alabama assistant coaches Ronnie Cottrell and Ivy Williams suing every Tennessee and NCAA bogeyman in the shadows ... The UA System Board of Trustees making up with UAB football, sort of ... Conference realignment run amok ... Threats of antitrust lawsuits against the Bowl Championship Series. ...
And that's just the stuff that affected this state. Throw in the Rick Neuheisel saga, the Mike Tyson weirdness, the Larry Eustachy binges and the Kobe Bryant sexcapades and, well ...
Can't we all just play some games?
Unfortunately, the games in these parts might again become secondary to the off-the-field maneuverings. The Price lawsuits insure that a brief but tawdry chapter (or was it a paragraph?) of Alabama football won't be closed quickly or easily. And conference realignment and BCS issues will continue to be a part of the football story until either the conferences devour each other or the BCS collapses under its own weight.
The most intriguing and perhaps most explosive off-field development will continue to be the $60 million lawsuit filed by Cottrell and Williams.
For some Alabama fans, watching the lawsuit unfold will be a lot like a hot night out on the town.
Oh, there will be lots of fun and plenty of sexy things well, that is, if you consider an old Rocky Top coot in a coonskin cap sexy to see. These could be days of drunken delusion and frivolity when bombastic lawyer Thomas Gallion tries to put the Tennessee and NCAA "conspirators" through the wringer.
But like a drunken binge at your favorite watering hole, there comes the next morning.
And then, one has to ask: Was all that fun which adds up to nothingness in the big scheme of things worth the hangover that ensues?
There is nothing good that can come of this lawsuit for the University of Alabama football program. Nothing. The lawsuit won't return any scholarships lost, won't make Alabama eligible for bowl games any sooner. It won't restore Alabama's reputation if anything, all this mudslinging just prolongs the damage and, contrary to one popular line of thinking, it won't bring the NCAA to its knees.
Maybe Cottrell and Williams were wronged in this process, and their careers tarnished as part of the collateral damage. That will be for the courts to decide, if this case ever makes it that far. But the rest of the lawsuit all the whines about Tennessee did this and Tennessee did that and Roy Kramer did this and Gene Marsh did that and the secret witness is a dirty rat just seems like a giant fishing expedition.
With a grand jury still out in Memphis and the prospect that the NCAA could reopen the Alabama case, maybe the lawsuit serves as a buffer to keep Alabama safe. Or maybe it just bloodies the water.
It reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines of all time.
As he tossed chum into the water on their little fishin' expedition, Brody caught a glimpse of a large, black eye and the flash of giant teeth.
"We need a bigger boat," he said.
Fast-forward a little into "Jaws." Brody, Quint and Hooper are drinking and singing and tapping on the table. 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, or something like that. It's then that things turn serious, when Quint tells the bloody story of the USS Indianapolis and his reasons for hating sharks.
"Farewell and adieu to ye fair Spanish ladies ..."
Alabama fans better hope and pray the plaintiffs in this case don't hook something bigger than the program itself.
Tim Stephens is Sports Editor of the Birmingham Post-Herald.
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