In rivalries today, especially one as heated as the Auburn vs. Alabama tilt, fans bashing another base for innuendo, witch hunts and trolling is to be expected. However, when the media dismisses everything said in the name of "it's just over zealous fans being just that, over zealous", things get missed. There are bigger stories that fall along solid trend lines that get ignored.
When Dee Liner posted a pic of himself with what looked to be several hundred to a thousand dollars in cash, while stating "#StruggleOverWit", it could be passed up as just another knuckle head kid posting an irresponsible picture of himself in a social environment hungry for the morsel he unwittingly provided. It very well could be an innocent, yet stupidly played ploy to look "hard" or to appear to be "ballin", but it falls along a trend of ridiculousness that has defined the Alabama Football team OFF the field.
NOBODY doubts the football prowess of Nick Saban recently. His success at Alabama has been nothing short of phenomenal. Lord knows, as much as many other SEC fans hate the man personally for whatever reasons, they respect what he's done. No matter how much they may loathe Alabama, they have NO problem getting on the "SEC's won eight BCS Titles" bandwagon, which Alabama alone claims three of the last four. Alabama's ascension to this place has been anything but the norm however. A team that was, for several years, plagued by probation, NCAA issues, poor play on the field and relegated to mid-tier SEC records for over a decade, the turn-around to what its become today was almost immediate, and unparalleled in modern college football history.
Why is that?
Nick Saban, while a good coach, was a mediocre coach at Michigan State that found the fountain of youth in SEC talent and clout at LSU, winning a National Championship there. However, outside the blanket of the SEC, he dipped his toe in the NFL and quickly realized it was more than he was equiped to deal with. For Nick Saban, there was no better place he could have ended up, than hungry, once proud, rich and powerful Alabama. They revered him in "God like" status, and hyped him into an almost too big to fail universe.
It first started with just getting better talent on the field. It didn't matter who, what background or how much of a problem they might be in class, or off the field, they just needed to up the level of play to start the ball rolling. Subsequently, while also clearing out some of the riff-raff left over from the years before via the process, Bama was plagued by arrests and off the field issues, but as predicted the level of play, limited suspensions, or questionable "ice cream" punishments, Nick kept those players on the field more than off. They won more ball-games, and the better recruits took notice. All they'd see on ESPN and outlets is 24-7 coverage of how the Tide was returning to their once lost Bear days of domination. ESPN, always hungry for the traditionals to drive ratings, pumped the country full of Bama love. They were rollin' baby.
Fast forward to what we know it 2013...
The Crimson Tide are at the top of college football. It drives many opposing bases crazy. How is it that they get all this talent? Is it just incredible luck? Is it incredibly great recruiting? Is it the constant drooling and inexplicably constant attention their evidently trillion dollar, golden laden bench press equipment filled weight room gets (I mean, I guess it is, it seems to just a huge ass weight room, but I digress...)?
It could simply be all those things. It could just be legit. However, how is it that NO OTHER football school, traditional, upcoming, or other team in the history of college football has been able to come close to this level of recruiting or continuous success? What is it about Tuscaloosa, AL that's SO far beyond what Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, the rest of the ENTIRE Southeast are NOT able to provide?
I'm not sure anyone knows. I'm sure the average Bama fan has their non-biased opinions, but...
What I DO know is, is that there seems to be an extreme level of differences between the lifestyle prominent Alabama players live, and those that don't reach their, sometimes inflated, potential. Players like Fluker, McCarron, Richardson, Ingram and several others drove Denalis, Cadillacs with the nicest rims from Hot Wheelz in Mobile, AL, or wear the finest tailored suits from T-Town's Menswear in Tuscaloosa, or have dinner with successful local business owners, like the ones that provide the rims and suits. OTHER players are beating up fellow students for candy bar money. They're selling cocaine, or riding out their last days as football team members, waiting for career ending injury medical waivers, whether the player thought it was warranted or not via the now infamous "Process".
Why is the mentor issue not seen by others outside of the Alabama universe? Players that are great, but possibly issue prone, are assigned a mentor. Fluker/Hot Wheelz guy for example... In a moment of idiocy, Fluker was known to direct message people on Twitter (including myself) to explain we just don't know the guy, and he'd do anything for anyone. Fluker even goes as far as to tell me how he's got pictures of the owner of Hot Wheelz with him and his family, and that "he really help with family problems". Fluker, a few days before the 2013 draft, even states on Twitter that he got paid while at Alabama. This coupled with all the other known issues should have sent a few journos to Tuscaloosa to ask a few questions, but it quickly gets scrubbed by most of the lazy media after a less than satisfactory "he was hacked" story from an agent that would lose his ass on Fluker if that story broke before a potential million dollar payday.
Fluker isn't the only one though. You have Calloway, who recently departed the Bama football team after it was revealed he'd utilized a stolen student's debit card to buy a candy bar in a dorm vending machine. Too bad Brent hadn't panned out, or maybe he would have been able to go to dinner with Tom Albetar, who took special interest in Trent Richardson. Albetar was seen in photos on Facebook taking Richardson to dinner at a Hibachi Grill restaurant, but that's, of course, only circumstance. It always is, right? While Richardson had Albetar, Calloway had business owners in Russelville, AL that made sure he was okay, and even made sure he was hidden away "for his own good" days before signing day, and only a day after flip-flopping on a commitment to Auburn.
Fact is, while media folks got bogged down tripping over each other to write the next angle on the Cam Newton saga that ended up turning up nothing against Auburn's 2010 BCS Championship Team, coaches, university or anyone associated with it (A Cam Newton that tooled around Auburn on a moped during is National Championship, Heisman winning campaign.), T-Town Tom racked up on hundreds of autographed jerseys, helmets and other memorabilia. Players earning their keep in T-Town ate well, drove the nicest cars and enjoyed all the spoils. While Auburn took exactly an hour to rid itself of four felons robbing a couple students in a trailer park, Bama's best players were driving their late model Camaros, Chargers and GMC SUV's 2-3 hours south to Mobile to have the best rims money could buy installed on their whips, some even getting custom paint jobs to go with them.
So, while cash is hard, if not impossible to trace, the trends and circumstances that drive fans to simply ask the questions is not hard, or impossible to trace.
Why would asking the questions be such a burden on those tasked, or employed to do so?
Maybe instead of Nick Saban asking if the Hurry Up No Huddle Offense is what football is becoming, he should ask if student athletes being treated to the spoils in Tuscaloosa is the what football has already become under his watch.
I thought that struggle, was part of the learning experience you get in college life. *shrug*
