Tide Tidbits - October 26, 2008

Coaches and Player Quotes After The Alabama Tennessee Game
Head Coach Phillip Fulmer: "Our guys have held pretty tight. We are in a battle top to bottom. I'm just concerned with winning that fourth game, getting ourselves bowl eligible and finishing up the season the best we can."

DE Robert Ayers: "I feel like we came out and gave a pretty good team effort offensively, defensively and on special teams. We had a good game plan; we played a good Alabama team, and we played our butts off. You have to give them credit."

Head Coach Nick Saban: "I've never been prouder of our team, our players the way they competed in the game. Tennessee's got a good football team and they play with a lot of heart and a lot of toughness out there tonight. That was a really good football game."

Alabama cruises to 29-9 win over Tennessee
Nick Saban has turned the "Third Saturday in October" rivalry back to Alabama's favor, and left Phillip Fulmer with yet another ugly loss to explain to Tennessee's many disgruntled fans. The second-ranked Crimson Tide cruised to a 29-9 win over the Volunteers on Saturday night for its first back-to-back victories since 1991-92. "This is a great rivalry with great tradition with two outstanding universities, and I'm really proud of the way our players played," Saban said.

Alabama hammers Tennessee
Long before Alabama put the final touches on its 29-9 victory over Tennessee, the Crimson Tide defense played with the swagger of a unit that recognized its dominance. Put in jeopardy by the kicking game several times in the first half, the nation’s fourth-ranked rushing defense and the Southeastern Conference’s second-ranked defense against the run never buckled. After the Tide took Tennessee’s best shots early, the Vols had nothing left but quarterback Nick Stephens, who had neither the time, the receivers nor the arm to lead the Vols back when they became one-dimensional.

Tide takes care of business against Vols
The good news is Alabama played a complete game on Saturday night. The bad news is that the second-ranked Crimson Tide needed most, if not all, of the 60 minutes to dispose of the Ten­nessee Volunteers. It was your typical Alabama-Tennessee game as the under­dog Volunteers fought gallantly in the first half to stay within striking distance before a defen­sive stand and a late first-half touchdown gave Alabama a little breathing room.

Alabama remains focused despite success
Alabama coach Nick Saban says it with pride, and his players nod their head confidently when they hear it. "We're a blue-collar team," Saban said. "We've got to play good defense. We've got to be able to run it. We've got to be able to throw it. We've got to have balance." The Crimson Tide had all the above and more Saturday night in making the kind of statement all championship-caliber teams make this time of year in a 29-9 bludgeoning of Tennessee.

From a Tennessee Forum (VolChat)...
There were less than 95,000 fans there, despite the announcement of 102,000, which includes players, coaches, referees, vendors, ushers, gatekeepers, etc. Every section had empty seats. Sections DD, EE, & FF, sideline upper deck on the east side, all had row after row of empties. The only sections that were packed full were the Bama seats around the top of the south upper deck & in the northeast lower deck around their band. Tons of tickets were all over the streets going begging. The only buyers were Bama fans & they were only paying $10 each. Had more of them known they could have gotten tickets at that price, there would have been 10,000 more of them there. As it stood, Bama easily had 30% of the crowd, maybe 40%. There was Crimson in every section of the stadium. Never has apathy like this set in on either fan base in this storied rivalry. Even when Bama was on probation & were going thru tons of bad coaches, they filled their seats for the Tennessee game. It is downright embarrassing how bad Fulmer has let UT's program slide. We must make a change. Neyland will only be half full for the Wyoming game, which may be the only one left that UT will win.

Roll Tide!