PASADENA, Calif. — College football expert Stacey Mickles
yesterday offered a bold prediction for tonight’s BCS finale — a
repeat of top-ranked Alabama’s 32-13 victory in the Southeastern
Conference title game, which brought Florida QB Tim Tebow to
tears.
“If we can make Tebow cry, we can make anybody cry,” said
Mickles, a Crimson Tide fan and Army sergeant currently stationed
at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, who was in town for the game with her
boyfriend and fellow soldier Richard McAlpin.
Some may doubt Sgt. Mickle’s expertise, but none of the
doubters were wearing crimson and white yesterday outside the
stadium in Pasadena where ‘Bama hasn’t played in January since
1946. The year after that game — in which the Tide crushed USC
34-14 — the Rose Bowl committee reached an agreement that the
annual event would match champions of the two conferences now
known as the Pac-10 and the Big Ten.
The decision to match the best teams from the West Coast
and the Midwest ended the proud boast of Alabama’s fight song,
“Remember the Rose Bowl we’ll win.” The game tonight (8 p.m. ET,
ABC) will therefore not be the Rose Bowl — eighth-ranked Ohio
State won that game 26-17 over No. 7 Oregon last week — but Tide
fans outside the stadium didn’t care. Neither did fans of the No.
2 Texas Longhorns, who were unperturbed by the fact that ‘Bama is
a four-point favorite to win the collegiate football
championship.
“We wish y’all luck tomorrow — just not too much luck,”
Texas attorney Ron Dickens told a Crimson Tide fan yesterday
outside the stadium shortly after the ‘Horns arrived for their
pre-game walk-through.
Texas quarterback Colt McCoy may not be in tears when
tonight’s game ends, but like Alabama fans, the Longhorns didn’t
come this far to lose — not even to a team whose star running
back Mark Ingram just collected the first Heisman Trophy in
Crimson Tide history. Ask any Texas fan and they’ll remind you
that four years ago the USC Trojans — led by Heisman winner
Reggie Bush — were defeated 41-38 by the boys in burnt orange
right here in Pasadena.
“Hook ‘Em Horns,” the Texans yelled yesterday as their team
debarked from buses outside the Rose Bowl and walked through the
famed gate beneath the palm trees in the shadow of the San
Gabriel Mountains.
The universal hand-signal of Longhorns fans is
indistinguishable from the satanic symbol commonly displayed by
heavy-metal rockers, but it is Alabama head coach Nick Saban —
a.k.a., “Coach Satan” to his enemies — who is arguably the most
demonized figure in college football.
Saban was hired away from SEC rival LSU three years ago,
coming to Tuscaloosa for a record $4 million a year. As
USA Today reported earlier
this week, an NCAA study found no correlation between a team’s
record and the head coach’s salary, but Saban’s 25-2 record the
past two seasons has contradicted that statistical trend.
Among Saban’s admirers is Texas head coach Mack Brown.
“I really admire what Nick has done,” Brown said
yesterday at his final pre-game press conference. Saban’s teams
are “very disciplined…he wins at everything he touches,” the
Longhorn coach said.
A Tennessee native, Brown himself was a youthful
admirer of the Crimson Tide’s most legendary coach. “I grew
up… loving Coach Bryant and Alabama and the tradition. There’s so
much passion in the South,” Brown said yesterday.
Texas has four national championships to its credit and
Alabama has 12, but the Tide may be hungrier for the BCS title,
because ‘Bama hasn’t won the No. 1 spot in college football since
defeating Miami in the 1993 Sugar Bowl.
Both squads that will take the field in Pasadena tonight
are from states where football is more serious than… well, almost
anything. Alabama and Texas are both part of the Bible Belt, but
if evangelical Protestantism is the region’s leading religion,
college football is certainly not far behind.
Which brings us back to Sgt. Mickle. Her expertise might
not yet be nationally famous, but as she stood outside the Rose
Bowl one day before the biggest game of the season, her guess
about the final outcome was as good as anyone’s, including
University of Alabama undergrad Tyler Anderson.
“34-17 Alabama,” predicted Anderson, who was hanging out
with friends in front of the stadium. Like every other fan in
town, the history and political science major from Huntsville was
impatient for that moment when predictions give way to the final
conflict.
“I’m ready for the game,” said Anderson.
His sentiment was answered with an enthusiastic “Roll Tide”
by an otherwise neutral and objective journalist.
