One For The People of Tuscaloosa: Alabama’s Championship & Why Sports Matter
By Kyle Kensing
Tuscaloosa suffered terrible tragedy in April. The vicarious thrills of watching young men in their late teens and early 20s play football cannot erase the horrible devastation the city suffered. However, Alabama’s BCS Championship is surely a needed bright spot breaking through dark skies in a trying time.
I think back to April 1997. I was a middle schooler, and my family faced trying years when my older brother passed away at the much-too-early age of 19. University of Arizona sports were fixtures in the Kensing household. When Miles Simon hugged the ball to run out the clock of the Wildcats’ defeat of Kentucky in that year’s Final Four, it didn’t erase the pain my parents experienced losing a son, or that I felt losing a brother. But in those moments we experienced a joy we shared as a family.
Outsiders don’t understand why we gravitate so closely to sports. They seem at best frivolous, and at worst detrimental to our society. Given all the bad that has garnered headlines from the sporting world in recent months, such negativity is understandable. Even supposed sports fans have seemingly lost sight of what endeared them about sports in the first place.
That hardening of the heart is nothing I am immune to. The Bowl Championship Series lends itself to the jaded skepticism so prevalent in today’s observers, embodying much of what we dislike. Money transcends sport. Events have become so focused on their profitability, the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta Bowls could easily be traded for Wall Street.
Alabama’s inclusion in the BCS Championship was a source of consternation for the anti-BCS crowd, myself included. But UA played with such passion and executed a perfectly crafted game plan even more effectively than it was drawn up, and proved it is the best team in college football. Well, at least as much as this system lends itself to proof.
What Oklahoma State might have accomplished against Alabama, or how Game 3 in a series vs. LSU matters not to the Tide. The system’s imperfect, but Alabama players, fans and coaches will worry about as much as the number of points UA surrendered tonight.
AJ McCarron played the best game of his career on the most prominent stage, Jim McElwain giving his quarterback and the ‘Bama nation a fitting farewell gift on his way out to Colorado State. The defense staked a claim to being college football’s best unit ever, keeping LSU behind the 50-yard line until the fourth quarter and pitching the first shutout in BCS history.
The Crimson Tide’s performance was one of historic proportions, and one that the people of Tuscaloosa will remember forever. Alabama winning a football game does nothing toward rebuilding destroyed homes or undoing the cost of human life last spring’s tornado caused, but that crystal ball is a symbolic gem in that city’s dark time.