Beware Florida of This Alabama Team That Wears the Crimson and White

We Bama fans are not looking ahead to any game after Auburn. Beating the six-fingered Tigers is number one on our list. Beating Auburn may be the most important game of this 2008 season.

Pardon us if we cannot get winning the SEC out of our minds too. We can do this. We are the fans and not the players.

After all, it appears that Alabama has already lost the SEC Championship to the Gators, and the game is still a few weeks away.

Tim Tebow is the best of the best (on and off of the field), and his Florida teammates are not far behind him.

I remember another game that the Tide lost before the opening whistle blew. It happened at the 1993 Sugar Bowl.

Very few people other than the Alabama fans, the Alabama players, and coach Gene Stallings believed the Tide should even be on the same field as the number one-ranked Miami Hurricanes.

Alabama did not just beat Miami 34-13. They made the job of naming a National Champion easy. Nobody needed a computer to decide who the number one team was.  

Yes, 1992 seems like a long time ago, but to Tide fans it is only yesterday.

1992 was Alabama's last national title, and it was not long after that Alabama began a downward slide.

Whether or not Alabama's punishment for the infractions of a coach and a booster fit the crime is old history to many—old history unless it had happened to the team that you hold dear.

There is no question, however, that these infractions cost the Alabama program dearly.

This brings me full circle to Auburn. I hope that the lesson of the 1993 Sugar Bowl is not lost on this year's Alabama team. There is not a team that cannot be beaten.

"The Rest of This Story" is for this Alabama team to write.