Why We Love To Hate Alabama and Texas

The NCAA national championship in football will be staged at the Rose Bowl Thursday night, featuring Alabama and Texas.

These are two teams that college football fans love to hate.

The reason why, in a word, is arrogance.

What is the major contributor to this image of total arrogance?

The primary reason is their fans' mouths.

If you've read the sports blogs in the past couple of days, you'll notice that the Tide and Longhorn fans are spending a lot of time typing and talking trash to the "low life, minor league" programs around the country.

"Boise State couldn't even give us a good practice," wrote one Texas fan.

"TCU, Boise State, and Cincinnati don't even belong in the top 10, let alone a BCS game," an Alabama fan wrote.  "How can you take a team that plays on a blue field seriously?"

"When the other schools have played football for over a hundred years, then we might consider them legit programs" was the comment on a blog by yet another Tide fan.

Are you beginning to get a flavor of the Tide and Longhorn rhetoric?

It's called arrogance. Texas-size arrogance.

Sorry Alabama, but you're considered small compared to most states.

Sure, both programs have been around one hundred years (give or take) and both have fine traditions. But why all the chest pounding?

"TCU and Boise State played a junior high style game Monday night," said another Texas lover. "The game was nothing but slop."

I guess we can look forward to seeing how real football is played Thursday night. Alabama and Texas are going to "school" the rest of the country on how it's done.

We'll see a flawless execution of offenses. No fumbles, no bad reads, no interceptions, no foolish time outs, and no dropped passes. Just to name a few.

We'll see two arrogant teams in an epic battle of marvelous, fine-tuned athletes in a demonstration of how football is really played.

After the Fiesta Bowl, many fans of both schools scolded TCU and BSU fans for such a poor display of football.

Some would say the Fiesta Bowl was a great defensive struggle between two very good football teams.

Not Texas and Alabama fans.

"That wasn't defense!" screamed an Alabama fan on yet another blog. "How can you say they played great defense when both offenses stunk?  Both teams were totally inept on offense!"

Someday perhaps we, the fans of the low-life, minor league college teams, will understand that the world of college football revolves around Texas and Alabama.

Without Texas and Alabama, there would be no college football. Don’t ever forget it.

The fans of the Longhorns and Rolling Tide get a sudden case of memory loss when you remind them that through both schools' histories, there have been times when those programs had their share of issues.

That loss of memory could be caused by the booze. Especially in Texas.

If you've ever been to a game in Austin, the first thing you notice is how "oiled up" the Longhorn fans are. There's a reason they have "drive thru" liquor stores in Texas.

I was surprised that they didn't make each fan entering the stadium take a Breathalyzer test, and if one was below 1.0, he or she would not be allowed to enter!

Of course, the booze just multiplies the arrogance factor at least 10-fold.

I can remember a time when Texas would sign 20-22 year old guys right out of high school! No, that's not a typo.

You see, in Texas high school football, they used to "hold back" players. In other words, the player would repeat 9th grade two or three times.

It's like aged beef. The longer you let it hang, the higher the grade it has.

Not too long ago, it was said that the University of Alabama would post guards on every highway leading into the state just in case the NCAA dared to cross the border to look for recruiting violations.

Am I suggesting that at one time, the Tide was guilty of NCAA recruiting violations?

Not me! I know those Alabama folks not only have gun racks in their pickup trucks, but they have guns in the rack! Loaded guns! Illegal guns!

Sure, they have a Bible on the dashboard of those pickups, but in Alabama, they believe that the "right to bear arms" is not so much about self-protection, but about enforcement of the phase "if you can’t say anything good about the Tide, you best not say anything at all."

Being a Tide fan is like a religion. It's sacred.

Who will win the national title Thursday night? I'm not sure.

If the contest was about which team had the more arrogant fans, I would have to say it would end in a tie.