The Thing About Losing is...

It sucks. For all of you who hide from all things football, Alabama lost its first game Saturday in what had seemed like a season of destiny. For those of us who sit awake during 4 am feedings of our newborns, worrying about whether the offensive line will be able to sufficiently protect Brodie Croyle from speedy, dangerous defensive ends, the loss was tantamount to the shattering of our dreams. I was going to compare it to the loss of a relative, but that seems harsh. However, I have lost some distant cousins and great uncles that didn't hurt this much. I know, I'm a heartless idiot -- save yourself from the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome of sending me hate mail.

And to make matters worse, Auburn won a big game against Georgia last night. Don't get me wrong, I don't completely hate Auburn. Auburn is a great client, and I really enjoy working with them and visiting the town. However, I hate when they win a big game because of their fans. I have friends who are Auburn fans, and they don't seem to be obnoxious, but I'm always afraid it's lurking down deep inside them. I just know that one day they'll go all William Hurt and turn into some feral beast that feeds on hapless Bama fans in the dark of night. (That's right, I just referenced 1980's "Altered States." Put that on your Netflix queue!)

Maybe I listen to too much sports talk radio. Every Auburn fan who calls into those shows talks only about Alabama, never about Auburn. If Alabama is losing, they call in to gloat. If Alabama is winning, they call in to diminish the victories. And then there are those who call in to say that not every Auburn fan is obsessed with Alabama, and in doing so, they spend the entire call talking about Alabama.

This is not to say that there aren't obnoxious Alabama fans calling in. There are plenty. The haters in crimson tend to throw around buzzwords like "class" and "tradition," and they never fail to reference the late Coach Bryant and Alabama's 12 national championships. But I can rationalize their behavior as being aberrant in comparison to "real" Alabama fans -- reasonable, respectable fans who don't gloat or boast about the fact that Alabama is home to the greatest sports tradition in all of recorded human history, but who, out of a deep magnanimity, pity fans and alumni of lesser schools. Fans like me.

So the loss was a blow to my Alabama arrogance. That arrogance is lessened of late, thanks to a recurring three-year cycle -- year one: a losing season; year two: mediocrity; year three 10 wins and the false hope that Bama is back. It seems we're in year three. Let's hope the cycle ends here. Otherwise, I might have to learn fan humility, and what fun would that be?

As an Alabama fan, there is only one thought as each season begins: national championship. Alabama could have no coaching staff and a roster of one-legged octogenarians, and we would still believe. "Well, Coach Bryant once fielded a team of lab chimps and overweight circus clowns and got 10 wins, because they played as a team."

I'm not one of those Bama folk who buy into the whole 12 national championships talk. Alabama never claimed a certain number of NCs until after Coach Bryant died. (By the way, only rednecks and the uninformed call the legendary coach Bear. Real Alabama fans afford the man the respect his position deserves and call him Coach Bryant, even in death.) In the mid 80s, as the Coach Perkins era was in full swing, an SID (Sports Information Director) named Wayne Atcheson took it upon himself to put a number to Alabama's championships. The number he picked was 12, which would be defensible if not for one glaring, idiotic choice: 1941.

You see, since 1937 the gold standard for determining the national champion(s) has been the wire service polls: the Associated Press and the ESPN/USA Today (formerly United Press International.) In that era, Alabama has won seven national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979 & 1992) and has been robbed of a couple of others. 1941 is not one of those championships. That year, Alabama lost two games and was nowhere near being the best team in the land, but some drunken idiot at Atlantic Sewing Monthly or some such organization named the Tide number one. This is not something to gloat about.

Had Mr. Atcheson chosen 1945, I could get behind that one. In '45, the Tide had two of the greatest players in their history, Harry Gilmer and Vaughn Mancha. The mighty twosome led Alabama to a 10-0 record, a victory over USC in the Rose Bowl and recognition as national champions by the National Championship Foundation. I know that's not a wire service poll, but those weak-minded fools were swayed by an old Jedi mind trick: they gave it to Army, the same Army who, it just so happens, won a war that year. (Of course, had the Tide been in charge of the campaign in Europe, Hitler would have faked his suicide and fled to Argentina in 1942 and hundred of thousands of newly enlightened ex-Nazis would have been goose-stepping through Nuremberg chanting "Rollen Tide Rollen!") The Tide had been named champs four times prior to 1937. There was no real standard then, so some years saw as many as five champions.

Even now, with a loss, I'm still devising scenarios which would get Alabama to the championship game. LSU will lose to Arkansas, putting Alabama back in the SEC championship game. Virginia Tech loses to Virginia. Miami loses in the ACC championship. Penn State suddenly remembers how lousy they've been in recent years and just gives up. Notre Dame's players will all quit football to enter the priesthood. Texas is declared ineligible after their home state gives up on this whole "federal experiment" and secedes, once again becoming the Republic of Texas and stealing our president, naming him to a lifetime term as Cowboy-in-Chief. Then, Alabama meets USC in a rematch of the Rose Bowl of 60 years ago. The score is the same as then: Alabama 34 -- USC 14.

(Please do not read the above paragraph to anyone who has the power to declare me legally insane.)

So here I am, facing headlong into a scary Iron Bowl this Saturday and trying to come to grips with a loss. Savannah doesn't really understand it either. When I called home after the game, she asked, "Daddy, why didn't we win?" I said, "because sometimes your team just doesn't win." What I wanted to say was, "because one of those blind crack addicts in the striped shirts wouldn't know an offensive pass interference penalty if he had just finished watching a Ken Burns documentary entitled "Offensive Pass Interference: Every Way it Can Happen and How to Know it When You See it in the Alabama-LSU Game." But I'm not bitter.

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In other news, Kelli's getting sicker. I'm exhausted. Savannah's fine and Cooper's a little Gershon'd. But who cares about any of that? Alabama lost.