Tide Tidbits – November 23, 2009

Computers big fans of Tide
Humans aren’t as convinced as the computers that Alabama is currently the best college football team in the country. Five of the six computer polls used to help determine the Bowl Championship Series standings had Alabama at No. 1 after this weekend’s games. The Billingsley, Colley Matrix, Massey, Sagarin and Wolfe polls have Alabama on top. The Anderson & Hester poll was the exception, and it had the Crimson Tide second. Computer numbers put Alabama on the cusp of overtaking Florida atop the overall BCS standings, though in the ratings released Sunday, the top-ranked Gators (.9664) retained a slim lead over the No. 2 Crimson Tide (.9614) based primarily on human []voting. [More]

Time is short for Tide
If nothing else, Nick Saban is a creature of habit. In a routine that he has described from LSU to the Miami Dolphins to Alabama, he wakes up each morning and places one cup of day-old coffee in the microwave, hits 1:11, gets the newspaper, grabs two cookies and sits down to read, eat and drink. “If I don’t have that routine,” Saban said, “I don’t start off my day very well.” Given this, it’s not surprising that when CBS and the Southeastern Conference got together in April and opted to move the Iron Bowl up one day on Thanksgiving weekend for the next two years, Saban “really wasn’t for moving the game.” That was especially true after Alabama had already scheduled UT-Chattanooga for the previous weekend. [More]

Tide gets down to nitty-gritty
Most of the Bama Bandwagon passengers drifted off to sleep about the middle of the third quarter of Saturday’s 45-0 steamrolling of Chattanooga, and we’re trying to let them sleep. They’re going to need their rest. They’ve got a couple of big weeks coming up. First, there’s the tuneup in Auburn on Friday. Then, on to the biggie in Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, yeah — I know it’s borderline blasphemy to gloss over the Iron Bowl in such a fashion, but what do you want from me? I call ‘em like I see ‘em. Spare me all the nonsense about throwing out record books and this being anybody’s game. It’s bunk. In 99 percent of the games, the best team wins. And there are but two exceptions to that rule: 1. The more talented team’s bus breaks down. 2. You have Les Miles for a head coach. Other than that, the best team wins every time. [More]

Auburn would love to wreck Alabama’s perfect season
Gene Chizik has participated in three Iron Bowls in his life, but it’s enough for the first-year Auburn head coach to come to one very strong conclusion. “This is in my opinion, if not the, one of the top couple of rivalries in college football,” he said. “The fans make it that way. It’s just great spirit. It’s great passion.” It’s been five years since Chizik has been involved in an Iron Bowl, dating back to the heavily-favored Tigers’ 21-13 win in Tuscaloosa on their way to a perfect season in 2004. Auburn was No. 2 in the country at the time; Alabama was not ranked. Those roles will be reversed this time around. Alabama (11-0, 7-0) enters the game No. 2 in the nation and with its ticket already punched for the SEC championship game against Florida in Atlanta on Dec. 5. Two more wins and the Crimson Tide will travel to Pasadena, Calif., to play for its first national championship since 1992. “That’s our rival,” Auburn tight end Tommy Trott said. “We’d love nothing more than to wreck an undefeated season.” [More]

Saban says work on Auburn began during Tide’s bye week
One game at a time? It’s Alabama coach Nick Saban’s mantra, but after Saturday’s 45-0 victory over Chattanooga, he admitted that preparation for Friday’s game against Auburn started a few weeks ago. “We worked on some of our future opponents during the bye week a couple of weeks ago, so we did spend some time on it then,” he said. Alabama’s open date was Oct. 31, the week before a 24-15 victory over LSU. “I think we understand what we need to do,” Saban said. “It’s going to be difficult preparation, because they do a really good job with their offense in terms of personnel, their formations and how they utilize those things. They have a really good back, they run the ball effectively. They’ve made a lot of explosive plays in the passing game, sometimes when people don’t adjust properly and sometimes because they are trying to stop the run.” [More]

Roll Tide!

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