Strong start energizes Alabama's voracious fan base

Nick Saban basks in the afterglow of last week's comeback victory over Arkansas that gave Alabama a 3-0 start. AP

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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- The barbecue at Bottom Feeders was tasty and ample, but Bobbie Bower hadn't quite had her fill, not once she overheard the conversation at a nearby table. So she paused on her way out, smiled and turned back time and Tide.

"That sounded like old-timey Alabama football," said Bower, 76 and all aglow. "That'll be one for the museum."

The video highlights of last Saturday's last-second 41-38 miracle win were already showing on a continuous reel over at the Paul W. Bryant Museum. Yet it wasn't just the image of Matt Caddell's touchdown catch with eight seconds left to beat Arkansas that lingers for Bower. It's the accompanying soundtrack:

Play-by-play man Eli Gold's on-air delirium. The crowd's pandemonium and "Bama's back, baby!" roar. And now the week-long, non-stop talk of the town here. And you thought only Notre Dame could wake up the echoes.

"This reminds me of the past so much," Bower said. "I haven't seen this much enthusiasm for Alabama football since the Bear was here." She paused, then verbally genuflected. "Coach Bryant, I should say."

It's only three games into the Nick Saban era, yet T-town's already nuts and daring to dream big again -- starting with Saturday night's nationally televised SEC home throwdown against Georgia.

The ESPN College GameDay guys have been here since midweek. RV's rolled into town as early as Tuesday night. Folks drove nearly an hour, as they do each Thursday, to get a seat inside Wings Sports Grill for The Nick Saban Show. The coach's weekly call-in radio lovefest from 7-8 p.m. (some fans arrive by 2, others even at noon to get a seat) has quickly become required listening.

Other deeper-pockets believers, 250 of them, pay $50 apiece for "Nick@Noon," the Friday luncheon at Indian Hills Country Club held before every Alabama home game. There, Saban also mingles, meets and greets and gets "my message out." His constituency gobbles it up. Especially this week, after last Saturday when Alabama's triumph dovetailed so nicely with Auburn's 19-14 home loss to Mississippi State.

"September 15, 2007. The day everything changed," wrote Kevin Scarbinsky, a columnist for the Birmingham News. "The day the Tide and the tide turned. ...The day Alabama banked on when it hired Saban and Auburn, in the deep, dark recesses of its mind, has feared ever since... The day Alabama became a contender again and Auburn, which started the season under the radar, fell off the map."

And Bobbie Bower nearly fell out of her armchair. "We were sitting there so excited," said Bower, who followed the game with her family -- including her mother, Millie Bullock, 94. They have perspective, having moved here from Mississippi when Bobbie was 10 and endured the Ears Years. J.B. "Ears" Whitworth won four games from 1955-57 before Bryant came home, won six national titles and changed everything.

In those final tension-filled two minutes last Saturday, Bower recalled, "Eli said, 'Grandmother, go in the back room and take you another heart pill!' Mother said, 'Well, I think I do need another one.' When the game was over, we just sat there. It was soooooo good. Absolutely perfect, those last two minutes. Textbook. And we won!!!"

Won while staging a fourth-quarter comeback, which Alabama had never done in four seasons and 49 games under Mike Shula, Saban's predecessor and a former Tide starting quarterback.

"Is it euphoric, to say the least? I would say so," said Bob Baumhower, an All-America defensive lineman here in the '70s, later a Pro Bowler with the Miami Dolphins and now a highly successful businessman who owns the Wings chain. "It's deep-seated, the culture of Alabama football. But it's to the point now where everything the fans have had to go through since Coach Stallings left, well, it's been inconsistent, at least."

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