WHERE IS ALL THE MEDIA COVERAGE FOR HOOPS?

NEWSPAPERS AND TELEVISION NEED TO STEP IT UP AS ALWAYS...


    I noticed this morning that my "dangerous site" protector or whatever it is called warned me that the entire Al.Com website contains things which might damage my computer. How funny is that? Can you remember when the Birmingham News and Birmingham Post-Herald actually had content worth reading? Years ago, on a radio show with Ron Ingram, I asked him how it felt to be in a dying industry? My speculation was that the internet was going to kill daily papers. The Post-Herald was the first to go. Now the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the Mobile Press-Register are all the same publication with a front page designed for each city. (No opinion on the  Montgomery Press-Register. I don't read it)

    A lot of us can remember waking up and going outside to get the morning news. At first, it was wrapped with a rubber band and then it gave way to the ubiquitous plastic wrapper. Hey, if you live in the Deep South the morning dew is a like a rainstorm. At least the wrapper kept the sports section dry. You pick up your paper and head back to the kitchen to read and drink coffee. My first act was to find the sports page and throw the rest of the paper in my trash. 

    None of the paper's in the state were exactly bastions for good reading. The sports sections were excellent. Football was covered 12 months out of the year. Basketball was the red-headed step-child of the newspapers in those days. 
Basketball is still second fiddle to football. In Alabama, that will never change. What always upset me about reading the limited basketball coverage of the day was they had no idea what they were talking about. Someone told me my basketball blogs were the first attempt to cover hoops only. I don't doubt that for a moment even though "attempt" might be the operative words. At least someone was trying to write about basketball. It was wearisome to try to dig information out of the SID office. The Alabama SID does a much better job in providing information and I think RollTide.com is a great site. 

   While it was difficult getting information about basketball at first, a few coaches were very helpful. Wimp Sanderson and Dale Brown were great. Both appreciated my efforts to cover basketball. There were other coaches who were helpful as the years rolled by. I count dozens of assistant coaches as friends. They still give me information and insight to this very day. I got an email from an ex-Alabama assistant telling me how much he liked the story about Alabama's greatest player. He agreed with my choice from a historical precedent but said you would have gone with Leon. No argument on my part about that at all. 

   Dale Brown called me at work one day telling me how much he appreciated my defending him regarding Lester Earl. I took a hard line stance and publically called Earl a liar. The NCAA gave Earl immunity in their investigation and LSU got tapped by the infractions committee. Later, Earl publically apologized to LSU, Brown, and Johnny Jones for lying to the NCAA. It turned out that the NCAA told Lester Earl he would lose two years of eligibility if he didn't say what they wanted him to say about Brown. 

    It's no secret that I admired Wimp Sanderson. He was the greatest coach I've ever known. Had Sanderson coached at a big time program he would have been an all-timer. Let me correct that. He did coach at a big-time program. The Tide was not second rate to anyone during his tenure. C.M. made the Tide a great program, but Wimp kept it great. That is hard to do. I wish our younger fans could have known Johnny Dee, C.M. and Wimp. Those gentlemen gave Alabama its greatest period of glory. I believe Johnson might be added to that illustrious list in the future.