The University of Alabama Football and Crimson Tide Sports Source
April 25, 2024
April 06, 2015
Alabama = Murray State?
With all due respect to Murray State and frankly any other “major” college program out there I don’t see head coach of Alabama’s basketball program as a step down.
I’m not sure what’s to blame for the failure of the Anthony Grant regime, but I know it was not a lack of support from the Alabama Athletic Department. The lack of fan support for Alabama basketball is a direct result of wins and losses. Alabama fans like winners – period. When the football team was losing the stands we not full.
The facilities of all of the nonrevenue sports have been upgraded and are among the best in the nation. The softball program has a state of the art facility; the baseball program will have next year. The University redid Foster Auditorium to house women’s basketball and volleyball. There is a new soccer facility and the track and field facility has been up graded. Alabama’s gymnastics team is among the nation’s leaders in attendance every year as is the softball team. All of this, at a football school.
Yes Alabama is a football school. Once upon a time football was the only sport anybody cared about at all. Make no mistake it still drives the boat. But, and this is a big boat, it is no longer the only game in town. The Patterson’s turned the gymnastics program into one of the premiere programs in the nation. Patrick Murphy and company have done the same with the softball program. It was the first SEC team to win a national championship in that sport. Those two programs like the football program are highly ranked each year. The golf programs are as well.
That’s what makes this statement by ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith so galling. “Considering what he's accomplished, if you're going from the NBA to college, you’d think he’d get an offer from a better program than Alabama.” I think when the numbers come out it will be quite apparent that Alabama is serious about having a first class basketball program. Will it make it to the final four? Who knows? Can the Alabama program ever get to the final four – yes, of course it can. It may not happen right away but it can happen.
Here’s giving Bill Battle thumbs up on getting a coach that is getting national kudos; and a great big raspberry to ESPN for not doing any homework. Keep up the good work guys.
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