Congratulations, LSU...and Bama is back!
Before you guys laugh me off my keyboard, hear me out on the last part. First of all, let me say that LSU is a great team and their defense (as I've said before) is nothing short of an NFL team. Now that I've said that, let me explain the last part of my headline - Bama played an incredible team...and it pretty much went down to the wire.

Let me rewind back to the off season where we as Alabama fans totally bought into the Saban hype, but some of us more "realistic" (if we really do exist) fans thought that this was going to be a rough year. We had a very young team, not a lot of depth, not a lot of talent or "big names", very undisciplined, practically non-existent strength and conditioning over the past 4 years, and an entirely new coaching staff. When you add all of those things up and face reality then it doesn't give you much hope going into the season, but we still packed out Bryant-Denney Stadium in April with roughly 100,000 of our closest friends and fanatics to watch a scrimmage and left with massive hope for a great season.

I believe after we won the Arkansas game and somewhat contained (if that's possible) an incredible McFadden (did anyone see that game Saturday against the Ol' Ball Coach?) and then pretty much dominated Tennessee that everyone forgot how poorly we played against FSU and believed once again.

Everyone that knows me knows that this time of year I'm an avid listener to sports talk radio. One of the shows had Gary Danielson of CBS last week to give his thoughts and predictions on the game. He said something that was very profound that I am coming to realize especially after Saturday's game. He said that on paper LSU is obviously more talented than Alabama, but that Saban was the equalizer to that. He said that there are plays that require better coaching and plays that require better players and if it comes down to coaching Bama would win. The better players won on Saturday, but we weren't out-coached by any stretch of the imagination.

Some of my observations from Saturday's game:
1. Matt Flynn is a good QB, but not great
2. Perilloux's absence made point #1 even more glaring
3. Glenn Dorsey at 75% is still better than most
4. Bama's O-line is much improved from past years
5. Bama's O-line still needs work
6. John Parker Wilson is inconsistent and doesn't always make great decisions, but some of the inconsistency blame can be put on point #5
7. Javier Arenas is an incredible athlete with great vision
8. D.J. Hall is still a great receiver and can make big plays
9. There are different interpretations of "irrefutable evidence" which means that even instant replay can let you down (but I'm not going to get into that so that I don't sound like a sore loser and it's a mute point now anyway)
10. Terry Grant could end up being a great running back...he's young and still ran well against a great defense
11. Saban is proving he's worth the hype - he's a great coach to have those kids ready to play that hard against an extremely talented and deep team with someone else's recruits

All that being said, I'm proud of my Crimson Tide even after that loss on Saturday. It was REALLY tough for me to take that loss, but I have to be honest and say that after the first quarter I thought we were going to be killed...so to have taken it down to the wire and only lose by a touchdown is nothing to hang our heads about! I now see discipline. I now see conditioning and stamina. I now see a desire to win and not give up - things that Alabama fans cut their teeth on, but haven't had in a while...all these are reasons why I believe that I can finally say that Bama is back!