CFB Crystal Ball: Alabama @ Tennessee - Week 8
Rod Gilmore sabotages the Third Saturday in October with an ill-conceived business venture. Nick Saban reveals the sick, twisted origins of Eastern Washington's red turf, as Kalen DeBoer mercifully comes of age. There are also 'Beauty and the Beast' references.
This is Part 5 of Robn's CFB Crystal Ball Preview Series, which predicts what will transpire during some of the 2024 season's most compelling matchups. Everything in this prediction will assuredly come true. Just wait. We are really good at this.
Date: October 19, 2024
What We Imagine The Broadcast To Be: 4:00pm ET on ABC
Location: Neyland Stadium – Knoxville, Tennessee
Actual Lookahead Line as of July 1: Alabama -2.5 at DraftKings; Alabama -2.5 at Caesars
The Master is still speaking. He's sermonizing on one of his favorite subjects, the number one reason College Football has gone to hell: The payment of players, and the skeezy boosters who source the budget for such efforts.
The Forced Protege interjects.
"Coach, with all due respect, you've been with us all off-season, and now half of the regular season. What was supposed to be one lecture at an April practice has morphed into an interminable self-appointment! Now, it's 30 minutes before kickoff, I've got to--"
The Master cuts him off.
"Catilin, if you interrupt me again I'm gonna run through your ass like shit through a tin horn."
"It's Kalen," the Protege says, defeated.
In retirement, Nick Saban has leveraged his Machiavellian balance of awe and fear to still coach. But instead of doing so on the sideline, he does so through ineluctable storytelling. While no one disputes the general wisdom he has to impart, they do question the timing of when he chooses to impart it, as well as the withering length of its dispensation.
He dispenses thus on GameDay, wherein either he's doing the ventriloquizing with his hand up Rece's ass, or the reverse (it's not always clear). He does it to Terry's guests at dinner parties, which he finally has time to attend, now. But mostly, he does it to new Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer, a man whose side he has not left, literally and figuratively, since the Spring Game.
To illustrate his point about the evils of unchecked money in college and athletics, he proceeds to tell DeBoer about an ill-conceived Fourth of July fundraiser held for boosters during his one-year stint as Head Coach of Toledo in 1990. The event, unfortunately titled "Rockets' Red Glare," involved a meet-and-greet with the players and staff on the field at the Glass Bowl, immediately followed by a fireworks show.
Upon ignition, many of the poorly constructed explosives turned into low-flying screaming mimis that headed straight at attendees' heads. Thankfully, no one was killed. But many were maimed. There was so much blood that afterward the entire field had to be repainted. Donations to the athletic department all but halted. Saban left Toledo at the end of the season.
"I told Jim McElwain that story when he was my offensive coordinator in 2009 and suddenly, the next year, his alma mater up in Or-uh-gone or wherever gets that God awful red-turfed field. They got the idea from him! The sick freak."
DeBoer, not listening, reflexively reaches for a red blazer to don, but shies away when he remembers it's in a traveling bag that Saban has marked, "For National Championship Winning Coaches Only."
"And that's why you can't spend too much time appeasing these people," Saban says. "They're snakes, and they're ruining the game."
The Commissioner
Down on the field, a very different type of Master is speaking.
In an attempt to demote him yet another year, ESPN has exiled unpopular broadcaster Rod Gilmore to the radio call of this week's Ball State-Vanderbilt game. With that game starting early and not legally allowed to last more than 2 hours and 40 minutes due to the mental health of those spectating, Gilmore was able to make it to Knoxville with several hours to spare before kickoff of tonight's showdown.
He's just come from a lengthly discussion with Vols coach Josh Huepel about their clandestine business venture together, a new Knoxville nightclub called Rocky Bottoms, where a hungover Huepel spent the majority of last night.
It was supposed to be the first time since 1989 that both Alabama and Tennessee met while both teams were undefeated. But the underwhelming play of ultra-hyped redshirt freshman QB Nico Iamaleava, coupled with devastating injury losses in the receiving corps to both Squirrel White and Bru McCoy, has led to a 3-3 campaign with losses to Oklahoma, Florida and NC State. Plus, even with Saban gone, this year's matchup has a lot to make up for: last year Tennessee blew a 20-7 halftime lead, and gave up 27 unanswered including a late-game strip-sack scoop n'score to blow the cover (+9).
With all the pressure, Huepel scoped out Rocky Bottoms simply to help take the edge off. He doesn't remember much, but what he does remember he can't unsee – "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross booming from the speakers; someone constantly rewrapping a feather boa around his neck; lots of mesh.
With their business concluded, Gilmore has brought Huepel to the broadcast booth.
"Fivveeess? A TEN is speaking!"
A chorus of groans from inside annotate Gilmore's arrival in the booth.
"Heyyyy, look who it is! Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer, my absolute favorite duo," he continues.
The game's actual broadcast team is more than displeased that Gilmore has anything to do with escorting their pre-game interview subject.
"Why is he here?" Tessitore holds extremely tense, prolonged eye contact with Huepel, who gives a little inbred squint if to say, "I'm just along for the ride."
"Just thought I'd help my new business partner find the booth," Gilmore says nonchalantly.
The Commissioner
"Your business partner!! So you found another sucker, Hot Rod? I seem to remember that we were partners, too, when you nearly bankrupted me and my family by convincing me to go in on that idiotic cat grooming business idea? And then you have the gall to show up here, at my place of business. What is it this time?"
"If you must know, it's an inclusive entertainment club in the heart of Knoxville. Not really your crowd, Joe, now that you announce prestigious sports like WWE," Gilmore files a nail obtusely.
"Hey Palmer. What's the name of that trash show you're on that women watch?" Tessitore asks.
Palmer tells Tessitore that he's gonna have to narrow that question down, a bit.
"Oh! The Bachelor!" Gilmore exclaims.
"Yeah, that one," Tessitore nods. "I have an idea. Let's vote Rod off. RIGHT now."
"Hey Joe, what it's like to be the white Gus Johnson? Must be nice to just show up and yell and get paid."
"What's it like to be the Darren Rovell of broadcasting?! Nobody likes you...!!"
Tessitore charges Gilmore, who thrusts the nail file at Tess in defiance and lets out a squeal. Palmer lifts both men up by their shirt collars, one in each hand.
"Guys, I've dealt with situations like this before on the show. No one's going anywhere until we sit down and talk through our differences, which we'll do as soon as we get done talking with Josh."
"Fine," Gilmore says. "Just make sure when you're talking with him you plug the club. If we hit out quarterly numbers then we can keep landing five-stars like Jordan Ross, plus... Josh and I can finally afford that beach house we always talked abo– Josh?"
But Huepel has long since skittered out the door unnoticed during the melee, in search of some Advil.
The First Half commences with a bang.
Jalen Milroe is back in Tuscaloosa, of course, hoping to add to his Heisman candidacy by getting his team to 7-0 on the year. 100 first quarter rushing yards plus 20yd+ connections with Germie Bernard and CJ Dippre are putting him in position to do so. The Tide begin the campaign up 14-7.
The biggest shock of the half comes not from the skill positions, but from center Parker Brailsford (along with Barnard, one of several Washington transfers who followed DeBoer to Alabama). Brought in specifically to fix the Tide's snapping issues from last year, Brailsford airmails a 3rd and 6 snap to Milroe in the shotgun, forcing a punt. Neyland is electric.
On the Vols offensive side, RB Dyan Sampson has gotten to the second level on a handful of runs, which set up a short TD dive, but Iamaleava has struggled.
The Commissioner
Huepel has forsaken pleas from backup QB Gaston Moore to replace Iamaleava. On the broadcast Tessitore can't help the regrettable line, "For a second there it looked like Moore was coming in and I-am-aleava'n-this-game." Moore has been with Huepel since the coach's days at UCF, and takes the slight personally.
It's 21-17 Bama at the half.
The reaction is swift and virulent. Paul Finebaum, more over-exposed on Saturday than a washed-out Polaroid, carries the torch of indignity on his fifth show of the day: the in-game stream-of-consciousness BaumCast on SEC Network Plus Plus, streaming exclusively on the latest thing you're not paying for, Venu Sports.
"The fact is that going 7-0 by just squeaking by teams, isn't going to cut it. If Kalen DeBoer doesn't start taking control of games more decisively and leading by double digits at halftime – start really making a splash – then his time in Tuscaloosa is going to be short."
In Tennessee's locker room, Gaston Moore corners his coach.
The glossy white southern boy has abruptly grown hirsute, and he's beefed up, adding equal parts muscle and baby fat to an engorging frame.
"It's like this," Gaston says. "I've got my heart set on replacing Nico, but you need a little... persuasion."
The backup opens up a cell phone video from the night before, texted to him from a mysterious contact going by the name 'HotRod.' The video shows Huepel, blacked out in the deep bowels of Rocky Bottoms, dancing the Macarena with a vodka cran in each hand while being hoisted in mid-air by these guys.
The coach's bird-mouth falls agape in shock. He quietly informs his OCs that Moore will lead the team out in the second half.
Some say the ensuing Beastly roar of triumph could be heard all the way in the visitor's locker room, where Saban is standing beside a projector addressing the squad, breaking down Tennessee's first-half schemes.
DeBoer stands behind him with his back against the white wall. Not wanting to interrupt, he speaks to his own team once he senses a lull in Saban's diatribe.
"Now, listen up," DeBoer begins, tentatively.
"Who said that?" A player in the back asks.
DeBoer steps into the light. "Me! I said it!"
"Sorry coach. You were standing in Coach Saban's shadow."
DeBoer sheds his churchgoing-Indiana-insurance-adjuster mien like a dead skin.
The Commissioner
"I'm the coach of this fuc*$#% team!! We said all off-season we were gonna be explosive! We were gonna be aggressive! How's this for explosive!!?"
He hurls the projector off its stand with a piercing crash. The room is silent.
"You can't see me!? America can't even see you out there. You're playing footsie with a .500 team whose biggest wins usually come on Wednesdays in the media, and you're giving them a chance to hang around!?! SHOW YOURSELVES!"
Saban quietly grabs his belongings and makes for the locker room exit. He pauses and nods silently to DeBoer, conferring his respect, his blessing, his merciful leave.
DeBoer is Tide-ready, now. The Master's work here is done.
Well. Almost Tide-ready. In spite of DeBoer's dramatic coming of age, and in spite of Huepel being blackmailed into playing the considerably less talented Moore for an entire half, it is in spectacular fashion that the game concludes in the reverse vein of 2023.
It is Alabama who blows a halftime lead on the road. What DeBoer's pep talk induced in terms of raw energy it lacked in terms of clear strategy – understanding Saban's scheme breakdown would have actually helped.
Milroe loses a fumble on a James Pearce strip-sack. The secondary gets tied up in screen plays and crossing routes as the Vols go tempo and Moore repeatedly hits Chris Brazzell and Braylon Staley in stride. Kicker Josh Turbyville is on fire and hits his fourth field goal of the day with 15 seconds left to seal the 33-31 win for the Vols.
It's mayhem at Neyland.
A few blocks away, Gilmore is stationed outside Rocky Bottoms handing out pre-made fliers showing the Crimson Tide mascot with giant X's over its eyes.
"Come Celebrate The Vols Big Win Over Alabama At Our Elephant Party!"
An electric night in Knoxville like this can't be wasted – every cover charge goes toward landing that next coveted recruit.
