All Tide Up

Tick, tick, tick, the countdown to UCLA is on.

Hands on Tuscaloosa clocks can’t move fast enough toward Sept. 1 and Bryant-Denny Stadium.

You see “Roll Tide” banners draped over dormitory railings.

It feels like game week, the tension is palpable.

In campus bookstores, anti-UCLA T-shirts fill the racks: “Californy is the place you ought to be.”

Over at drippy-dreamy “Dreamland Barbecue,” off Jug Factory Road, Michael Cherbonneau works on a full slab of ribs as an Auburn-Mississippi game replay blares overhead on television.

Can you not feel autumn in the air?

Cherbonneau, 23, is a sixth -year Alabama student.

“Wanted to get another football season in,” he says quite matter-of-factly.

Alabama players and fans can’t wait to shake the stench of last year’s 3-8 season, can’t wait to pay UCLA back for last year’s drubbing at the Rose Bowl, can’t wait for the NCAA to issue its lily-livered sanctions so that real men can get back to the business of winning championships; can’t wait to usher in the era of Coach Dennis Franchione, hired from Texas Christian for $1.1 million a year to return that growl Bear put into the program.

You sense it is very, very close to game time.

Birmingham News columnist Clyde Bolton is in midseason form.

“The team collapsed,” he writes of last year’s debacle. “The coach was canned. The NCAA is investigating. The program is in chaos.”

Cherbonneau says Franchione will get plenty of time to develop, just as long as two or three minutes are enough.

UCLA?

“That’s the one game Franchione needs to win,” Cherbonneau says. “Even more than Auburn.”

Yep, it feels like game week.

But it’s not.

We stopped by on July 17, with school not in session, in the dead of summer.

Kickoff for UCLA is six weeks away.

Yeah, so, and the point is?

Anyone here could inform you there is but one season--football season--with September, December, February and July all roll-tide-rolled into one.

Pictures of coach Bear Bryant are tacked on establishment walls the way John F. Kennedy portraits are hung in Irish-Catholic homes.

Here, it is no exaggeration to say a state’s collective emotional mood swings on the outcome of Alabama football games.

The highs are exhilarating, but the lows can be crushing, and Alabama is coming off its lowest ebb since the days of coach J.B. “Ears” Whitworth.

Speaking of ears, the mere mention of UCLA can produce Fulton-steamboat bellows from Tidal canals.

You see, Alabama’s downfall has been tracked to last year’s 35-24 September loss to UCLA at the Rose Bowl.

Alabama was coming off a Southeastern Conference title and entered the game No. 3 in the preseason polls.

Thousands of Crimson Tide fans motored west for what they thought might be the start of a national title joy ride.

Instead, UCLA back DeShaun Foster rushed for 187 yards and Alabama chugged home with tailpipes between their legs.

Alabama Athletic Director Mal Moore still can’t believe it.

“We drift in there and don’t play,” he said, as if the nightmare was last week.

The Crimson Tide’s 3-8 finish was their worst in 44 years.

Post-UCLA, Mike DuBose’s staff developed more fissures than the San Andreas Fault. Wide receiver Freddie Milons, a preseason Heisman candidate, basically took the rest of the year off.

“I just didn’t show up,” he admitted this year at SEC media day.

Alabama being Alabama, Moore went for the preemptive strike, firing DuBose and his staff midseason after a 40-38 homecoming loss to Central Florida.

“The team just fell apart as we went along,” said Moore, a playing disciple of Bryant. “I’ve always felt, as it was with Coach Bryant, it all comes from the top.”

Moore made big-money plays for Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer, Clemson’s Tommy Bowden and Miami’s Butch Davis, but all he ended up doing was landing those coaches pay raises.

Moore then zeroed in on Franchione, a career turnaround artist, who happened to be on campus for an interview the day the NCAA was in town to investigate Alabama for possible violations.

Media reports have speculated a Memphis high school coach received $200,000 to influence a player, Albert Means, to attend Alabama.

The NCAA is expected to soon deliver its letter of charges, after which Alabama will have time to answer.

But that’s not the only hammer about to drop.

Penn State Coach Joe Paterno is two wins from breaking Bryant’s major college record of 323 victories. Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, with 315 wins, also could pass Bryant this year.

Only Paterno’s worst season at Penn State, 5-7, prevented Bryant’s record from falling in 2000.

“That’s a sacred record,” Cherbonneau said. “It should have happened last year. Someone make a joke about Joe Paterno dying, that it would be the curse of the Bear, but it never happened.”

Hot Seat

Franchione thought he knew what he was getting into when he took the Alabama job.

Then he thought again.

“There’s no way you can have any complete idea until you’ve sat in this chair,” he said. “You mean so much. This football program means so much to the people in this state.”

Franchione is 138-65-2 in 18 seasons as a head coach. He turned around losing programs at Pittsburg (Kan.) State, Southwest Texas State, New Mexico and TCU.

Franchione inherited a 1-10 team at TCU in 1998 and directed seasons of 7-5, 8-4 and 10-1.

But this is Alabama.

This is a place where, to get to Franchione’s office, you drive down Paul W. Bryant Boulevard and pass the Paul W. Bryant Museum.

In May, having not yet played a game, Franchione received more than 800,000 hits on his Web site.

This is all residual of Bryant, who led Alabama to six national titles. His presence is felt in Tuscaloosa’s every nook and cranny.

No minor move goes unreported.

In July, Franchione caught heat when he dared to move media day from Monday to Tuesday, the same day Auburn conducts its weekly session.

Why, doesn’t the man know that, in the 1960s, Bryant and Auburn coach Shug Jordan came to a meeting of minds and agreed to hold media day on separate days to spread out the publicity?

The move would have been a news blurb in most towns.

Here, it leads the 6 o’clock news.

“I labored over that decision for a long time,” Franchione said.

Franchione never intended to make people forget about Bryant.

“I didn’t come here to change those things,” he said, “I came to embrace them, and just carve my little piece out.”

Franchione could have started with a machete.

He found a program lacking direction and discipline. He found players were not strong enough. He initiated 7 a.m. workouts to help turn the tide.

“I definitely needed to create the right work ethic again,” he says. “And they were hungry for those qualities.”

Franchione also threw his body on the train tracks of the oncoming NCAA sanctions, telling players he alone will handle all questions.

“It’s like the weather,” he said of the sanctions, “We have no control. There’s no sense worrying about it. My job is to take care of the football team. They need somebody to point them in the right direction.”

Bear With Us

Bryant used to eat breakfast most mornings at the Waysider Restaurant, not far from campus.

It remains the place where Alabama fans freely mix gridiron with grits.

It’s the place where you can take the temperature on Alabama football and get a pretty good reading.

One finds the July mood surprisingly upbeat.

Over a breakfast of eggs, sausage and biscuits, brothers Jimmy and Bobby Ledbetter are convinced Alabama is on the comeback trail.

Jimmy runs an auto shop in town, Bobby is retired after years in the glass business. Both are season-ticket holders dating to “Ears” Whitworth.

The Ledbetters are convinced Franchione is the right man.

“He really wanted to come to Alabama,” Jimmy said. “We liked that. We want him to stay the duration, like Coach Bryant did.”

Bobby admits last year was agony.

“We’re not good losers,” he said.

But Bobby is also itching for the opening bell.

“I think you’ll see a different program altogether for the UCLA game,” he said.

Folks here know there is a price for doing football business. For some, NCAA sanctions are collateral damage for a program that measures success one banner at a time.

“We just have to take our licks and go with it,” Jimmy said. “If we got people that did something wrong, I’d like to see it come out and get it cleared up.”

The Ledbetters have even come to terms with the inevitable: Paterno surpassing Bryant’s record sometime this fall.

Folks here argue Bryant didn’t have the benefit of 12-and 13-game seasons.

Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list, but who has forgotten Ruth hit 714?

Crimson Tiders know Bryant and 323 are a man and a number indelibly linked.

“Coach Bryant had a lot of respect for Coach Paterno,” Bobby Ledbetter said. “The record can be broken, but Coach Bryant is still going to be Coach Bryant in Tuscaloosa.”

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UCLA AT ALABAMA

SATURDAY, 4:45 PDT TV: ESPN

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rolling Downhill

Alabama’s record in the past four decades. The Crimson Tide won three national championships in the 1960s, three in the 1970s and one in the 1990s:

1960s: 88-20-3

1970s: 107-13

1980s: 82-36-2

1990s: 79-43