Alabama Fans are California Dreaming

California, here we come!

Those were the words spoken by Alabama sports broadcaster Eli Gold at the conclusion of the biggest win for Alabama football in a decade.

The Tide was California Dreaming!

Tide faithful aren't dreaming of Hollywood starlets.

We all know the world's hottest women all live in the south.

Want to argue the point? No Problem. Megan Fox is from the South. I rest my case.

Anyway, I'm getting off subject, but what better reason to use Fox's photo?

As I heard a replay of Eli Gold's game-ending call this morning, my mind went back to the last time Alabama had such a win. It was 1999 and Alabama defeated Florida for the second time that season to take the SEC crown.   

Alabama returned a fair amount of talent to the 2000 squad, so things looked bright for the Tide. But looks can be deceiving.

In the wake of the '99 season, Alabama got lazy. The staff let players dictate workout schedules and some unscrupulous boosters were allowed to run rampant. The result was a pathetic, out of shape team and a devastating NCAA probation.

By the end of 2000, Alabama had been humiliated repeatedly on the field, head coach Mike Dubose was resigning, and Alabama was about to plunge into the valley of death.  

Alabama followed up the ill-fated hire of Mike Dubose with Dennis Franchione.

It's hard to call Coach Fran a terrible coach. He managed to find some success with a good strength program and a simplistic offense.

Long-term, Coach Fran was never going to work. Franchione success was about making bad programs respectable, and then moving on before his bad recruiting and gimmick offense were figured out.

When Franchione jumped ship, Alabama hired Mike Price, who turned out to be a womanizing drunk. He was fired before ever coaching a game.

At the end of these events, Alabama was set up for a nightmare that would seemingly never end.

During Franchione's tenure, he failed to recruit quality lineman, something every coach will tell you is suicide. By the time Mike Shula took over as head coach, the seeds of failure were already in place.

A great coach could have possibly turned things around in a few years, but Shula wasn't a great coach. In fact, he wasn't even a good coach.

I hate to say that because he's one of Bama's boys, and his accomplishments on the field as a player are part of Alabama lore.

The truth was hard to swallow.

Several years later, Alabama was on the field getting beaten unmercifully by Mississippi State.

It's not the first time Alabama has lost to State, nor will it likely be the last. But this was not just a loss. This was a humiliating beat down of Biblical proportions. The beating started at the opening kick and Alabama just laid down.

Everything that was good and honorable about Alabama football was gone.

I actually refused to watch the game. I knew how it was going to go and I had something else to do that day. I turned on the radio a few times. The hopeless chatter from Eli and Kenny Stabler was more than I could take.

Most believe Mike Shula's tenure as coach ended that day. While an upset of Auburn the following week might have changed things; that was never going to happen.

Shula's teams were mediocre in talent, weak in stature, simplistic in design, and failed to show the kind of heart or stamina needed to win big games.

It was pretty obvious Mike was going to be fired after the Bulldog pounding, and the sports media was running down Alabama at every turn. 

"Why would anybody take that job?" they asked. "Alabama's a second rate program." 

Alabama had been consigned to the junk yard of history with only grainy video of championships gone by.

As a fan base, none of us believed Alabama football was a thing of the past. We hoped beyond hope that, somehow, someway things would turn.

I was in Disney World with my family when the call came from my old Bama roommate.

Rumors had been flying for months on possible coaching candidates. Rich Rodriguez had embarrassed the Tide yet again by first agreeing to and then backing out of an agreement to become their next coach.

“Nick Saban did not show up for his regular morning presser down in Miami,” he said. I asked my old friend, “Can this be true, can we really be getting Nick Saban?” We hung up, and an hour or so later, while I was waiting in line for the newly opened “Expedition Everest” ride, the final call came. “He's here man! He's in Tuscaloosa!”

From that moment on, things changed.

It started immediately.

I was wearing a Bama baseball cap that day, and everywhere I went I would hear a “Roll Tide!” in the crowd. I would look up to find the source and see some guy giving me a thumbs up, usually wearing a Bama cap or shirt of his own.

Saban's time in Tuscaloosa could probably be counted in hours that first month. He hit the road feverishly looking for recruits and assistant coaches.

Though you would expect a big recruiting boost that first year, the effects were minimal. Alabama did trade off a few Shula guys for Saban guys, but that class was not too different from what we were getting before.

Saban, however, was way ahead of most of us. He was spending as much time recruiting 2008 players as he was for the upcoming signing class. The results the following year was possibly the greatest signing class in Alabama history. The class was almost unanimously ranked No. 1 in the nation.

That first year on the field, however, was not quite what many of us expected.

There were numerous arrests and the team didn't really look much different from before. They were in better shape, as evidenced by a fourth quarter win against Arkansas. The offense was still bad, especially in the red zone.

A mid-season beating of hated rival Tennessee gave us hope and had many of us crowing that Bama was back, but the program collapsed soon afterwards.

It seemed Saban had no magic potion to take away years of bad coaching and suspect recruiting.

Though there were many dark days that first year, everyone believed Saban would eventually turn things around.   

For Alabama to make the journey from the worst team in the SEC to the best in three years is an amazing accomplishment that will be burned in my memory forever.

On the day Alabama was getting stomped by Mississippi State, I would have never believed three years later we would be playing for a national title.   

The journey from 1999 to 2009 cannot be put into words.

Alabama's program was brought to its knees.

The fans were peppered with constant ridicule.

The talking heads on the national and local level heaped salt into the open wounds and rubbed it in.

A thousand jokes about a certain deceased coach named “Bear.” Signs held up everywhere calling us “Cheaters.”

We were yesterday, we were ancient history, we were losers.  

To every fan who endured it all, not being able to answer back.

To every fan who walked the gauntlet of obnoxious Florida State fans down in Jacksonville after getting beaten.

To every fan who endured the catcalls and the ridicule from Minnesota fans up in Nashville.

To every fan who watched in agony as LSU, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee took our dignity over and over.

To every fan who walked out of Bryant Denny after a humiliating loss to La Monro.

This season is for you.

This season is vindication; this season proves that we were right all along, that Bama was never dead, just asleep.

Only one thing remains: the California Dream. Victory in the Rose Bowl, where the legend of the Crimson Tide all began.