Shocker puts Tide’s fans on high alert
Crimson supporters still reeling from last year’s loss
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — On most given autumn Saturdays, Rama Jama’s, the crimson-and-white-flavored hamburger joint in the shadow of Bryant-Denny Stadium’s south end zone, is most assuredly the happiest place on earth.
Gary Lewis, Rama Jama’s owner, serves as amiable host and ringmaster, ringing up sales and swapping tales before game time and, just about always, sharing stories of valor and victory after yet another University of Alabama football win.
Nov. 10, 2012, however, was not one of those given Saturdays.
Like any successful hamburger cook, Lewis spins a good yarn. So there is a distinct possibility he could be slightly cooking his account of that fateful day last year when Johnny Manziel and the Texas A&M Aggies came to town and beat the top-ranked Crimson Tide 29-24. Then again, maybe not. “It was probably,” Lewis said, leaning forward for emphasis, “the longest night in my 18-year career here at Rama Jama’s. Wewere in a state of shock. Wewere down 20-0 before I had sold 500 hamburgers.”
Dark was the mood, and glum were the faces behind Rama Jama’s counter, even as A&M fans piled into the restaurant to outnumber Alabama fans as defeat descended on the Tide.
“I can look back and remember that night,” Lewis said. “The visiting team buses park near here, right in view, and I looked out after the game was over, and there was probably 10,000 celebratory Texas A&M fans gathered to greet the team, as they should have. And then
“I think that it would be fair to say that I was shocked. We had seen all the hype, and we had seen Johnny Manziel run up and down the field, but LSU and Florida had beaten them. I’m thinking, ‘OK, this kid is good, but we’re Alabama.’ They went up 20-0, and I still wasn’t concerned. Irritated, but not concerned.”
John Merrill, a former Alabama student body president
some good old redneck boys from Alabama came through the crowd, and it got wild.
“The physical activities that were going on … I almost locked my doors. There was no way to disperse the crowd. They couldn’t go one way because of the cemetery across the street or the other way because of the stadium, so there they were, right on Paul Bryant Drive.”
Rama Jama’s still stands, so it stands to reason that order eventually prevailed. Manziel went on to win the Heisman Trophy, and Alabama went on to win its second consecutive national championship.
And now they meet again, this time at Kyle Field in College Station on Saturday, but there is a different feel to the smooth veneer of Southern charm that first welcomed the Aggies into the Southeastern Conference for the 2012 season.
In a town where the local sports talk station generally marks time by counting down to each year’s Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn, Crimson Tide versus Aggies is all of a sudden the Game of the Year.
“It’s the only game,” said Alabama senior student Tommy Himmelman, pausing in front of a display case at the Paul W. Bryant Museum, located next to the Paul W. Bryant Conference Center a few blocks down Paul W. Bryant Drive from BryantDenny Stadium.
“LSU has been the big game for the years I’ve been in school, but this year you see A&M as the first conference game, and that’s the one. That’s the one game you need to win this season, even more so than Auburn. Win that, and we should be able to cruise for the year.”
Some SEC fans last year greeted A&M’s turbo-charged offense under coach Kevin Sumlin with the same bemused tolerance with which they might greet Reveille, A&M’s collie mascot: Give the Aggies a cookie, tell them how welcome they are, pat them on the nose, and then, once kickoff comes, steal their kibble, lay waste to their dreams, pat their nose once more and send them home with a one-sided loss and a cheery “y’all come back real soon.” Manziel ‘the best’
Even more charitable folks like John Merrill, a former Alabama student body president who represents Tuscaloosa in the state legislature, weren’t expecting what the Aggies had in store for them a year ago.
“I think that it would be fair to say that I was shocked,” he said. “We had seen all the hype, and we had seen Johnny Manziel run up and down the field, but LSU and Florida had beaten them. I’m thinking, ‘OK, this kid is good, but we’re Alabama.’
“They went up 20-0, and I still wasn’t concerned. Irritated, but not concerned. I’ve seen Heisman Trophy winners and players who can dominate the game, but he’s no Doug Flutie or Tim Tebow.”
But by game’s end, like any skilled politician, Merrill had adapted to the new reality.
“I stand by this statement,” he said. “Johnny Manziel played the best game against us that any quarterback has ever played in one game in the history of this institution. I kept thinking that we would knock his butt out — not just ruin the play, but knock him out of the game — but nobody got a solid hit on him. I was thoroughly impressed.”
That’s the charitable view, which is an easy one to have when one’s chosen team has won three of the last four national championships. But there is a certain variety of Alabama fan who is convinced that only Alabama can beat Alabama, especially in the Nick Saban era, and the men on the other side of the ball are mere props.
You’ve heard that kind of talk most frequently on Paul Finebaum’s radio show, which for years was based in Birmingham and beamed across the South before Finebaum’s move this year to Charlotte, where he is hosting a new show on ESPN Radio.
And that brings us to Jim in Crestwood, the radio handle of one of Finebaum’s more frequent callers (and the only name he is inclined to give to nosy interlopers who call in the middle of “Monday Night Football”), who holds steadfast to that particular brand of pigskin logic.
“At this point in time, if you’re Alabama, you’re playing against Alabama,” Jim in Crestwood said. “If you do what the coach tells you to do, play the Alabama football that Saban has created, you don’t worry about the other team. You worry about playing to your potential.” Stigma persists
To be fair, Jim in Crestwood and his fellows aren’t completely dismissive of the A&M threat. They give credit where it’s due to Manziel’s ability to extend plays and push pedal to metal when it comes to pace and tempo.
“It’s all about Manziel. It’s not about Texas A&M,” Jim in Crestwood said. “I fully respect coach Sumlin and what he has done, but without Manziel, Texas A&M is a middle-of-the-pack SEC team, and I’m not even sure they would be that. He is the whole deal.
“Alabama didn’t come out ready to play, and they had no idea who Manziel was, really. Now they do, and I suspect there might be a different outcome Saturday.”
Even so, the damage is done. Although Alabama got back into the national title chase, Lewis said, “the stigma of losing a game was always in the back of our minds. I don’t think it ever went away.”
Himmelman, the Bryant Museum visitor, missed last year’s game because he had to attend his sister’s wedding in Modesto, Calif. He blames himself for the loss.
The grumpiness persists in the wake of Alabama’s less-than-impressive, at least to the locals, 35-10 seasonopening win over Virginia Tech two weeks ago.
And then Wednesday, the day that Alabama fans by divine right planned to spend celebrating the centennial of Bryant’s birth, came a report from Yahoo Sports that former Tide lineman D.J. Fluker was one of five former SEC players who received money from agents fun- neled through former Alabama player Luther Davis, who is said to have worked as a runner for the agents.
Athletic director Bill Battle said the school was aware of the allegations prior to the story’s publication and that it was investigating the reports. Still, it made for tense times, if briefly, for Saban, who cut short his news conference after repeated questions on the matter that he answered while deferring further comment to Battle, and for thousands of Alabama cyber-fans clogging AL.com and other sites. More than ‘next game’
As for the game, confidence is high. Without Manziel in full roar, Himmelman said, A&M “is kind of like Kentucky. I don’t worry about anything else. The receivers are different. The defense isn’t the same. If Johnny has just a great game but not a spectacular game, I see us winning by about 10 points.”
Merrill, who will attend the game in College Station, said Alabama fans “now look at the game with some degree of anxiety.” Jim in Crestwood is still grumpy about the Tide’s performance against Virginia Tech, but he presumes that if the Alabama offensive line mans up, things should be well in hand by the fourth quarter.
And Lewis, as he does for every away game, will shut the doors of Rama Jama’s at 2 p.m. Saturday and settle in front of his TV set — but this time, with some degree of apprehension.
“You hear, ‘It’s the next game. It’s the next game,’ ” he said. “How can it be the next game, even though it is the next game?
“As fans, it’s the Texas A&M game. It’s the one we lost last year.”