06-07-2008, 09:49 PM
#1
Quote:
58-56
My brothers, my sisters,
The first misconception is this: UAB and Alabama-Tuscaloosa are not rivals. Though it is true that in 1982 Sports Illustrated named this as the most heated rivalry in America, “even though Alabama is deathly afraid to play UAB” to quote said magazine, they are not a rival. A rival is someone with whom you engage in heated but friendly competition. I do not hope they lose their games: I am affronted that such a corrupt institution is allowed to play competitive intercollegiate sports at all.
In the dawn times, when Memphis and I were students, we had a new program. We welcomed Gene Bartow from UCLA. At his first public appearance, Tide supporters printed and handed out flyers with pictures of Gene and Richard Nixon, asking, “Would you buy a used car from either of these men?” It was the bammers who struck the first blow, it was the bammers who inaugurated their relationship with UAB athletics with the childish smearing that has been their way ever since.
This is not, as the on-their-knees apologists in the so-called local news media would have it, a myth. I have one here before me.
My brother for life is incorrect; in the earliest years Alabama-Tuscaloosa DID play UAB in baseball. It was when Harry “the Hat” Walker’s team utterly destroyed the crimson ones that the Drunken Bear declared that Alabama-Tuscaloosa would never, ever play UAB in anything. For the past 24 years, bammers have attempted to fellate a dead bear back to life. Many appear to feel that, in his honor, they must destroy anything that comes out of UAB.
As UAB basketball gained success after success, so did crimson envy rage ever hotter. And in those days we truly were the “commuter school” for which we were ridiculed. Our students worked, usually 40 hour low-paying service jobs, while theirs lay drunk on Fraternity Row, their bills happily paid by Daddy and their careers fully assured by The Machine. On weekends, there were bars for them, and bars for us. We did not go into the Courtyard; when they dared venture into the Nick, we beat the living hell out of their izod-wearing preppie asses. It was class warfare, pure and simple, class warfare that continues today.
The state of Alabama and city of Birmingham are beset by social, economic and political problems. Anyone not blind or stupid knows this. And anyone not blind or stupid knows that this is the result of over a century of misrule by the “Big Mules,” the politically-connected families that provide our so-called leaders in business and politics, the degenerate third- and fourth-generation incompetents and slackards who have driven our state into Third world misery. And what forges their connections? The University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa and The Machine.
Tuscaloosa is the past. We will NEVER recover from the disastrous legacy of George Corley Wallace with leadership produced in the cesspool of the UAT-SGA. Poverty, oppression, despair – these are the legacy of “class” and “tradition.”
UAB represents a hopeful future, a green-and-gold vision of brotherhood and prosperity for all our citizens. UAB has never been segregated; Tuscaloosa is the very symbol of American racist shame. UAB gave the world fiber-optic technology; Tuscaloosa gave it the Tijuana Hotplate. UAB discovered the origins of AIDS; Tuscaloosa grads wrote the state’s 1901 constitution.
The lesson of Tuscaloosa is that success does not come from hard work, it does not come from talent, skill or the application of these qualities. “If at first you don’t succeed,” goes the Tide mantra, “ask Daddy to buy it for you.” Athletic programs are symbols, and what theirs symbolizes is the rot at their hearts. When they cannot win, they cheat. And when that fails, they just make up championships.
And often this cheating has centered on UAB. They bought Ennis Whatley after he had committed to UAB. They bought Alfonso “Buck” Johnson, roommate of Mike Davis, so blatantly that his mother demanded he take the payoff and sign with the Tide IN FRONT OF THE NEWS MEDIA. They bought player after player, and yet they have little to show for it but flocks of alumni in the NBA and proud claims of the Sweet Sixteen. After our glorious victory over Virginia in 1982 to advance to the Elite Eight, the bammer-controlled state legislature celebrated by deleting funding for dorms from the upcoming budget.
We hate them for their arrogance. We hate them for selling this state’s poor on the notion that they can exchange a satisfying, fulfilled life for one of poverty and ignorance as long as they can wear bammer shirts and hats. We hate them for the lies, for the criminal acts, for the sodomization of this state’s people. We hate them for their moral cowardice, for their twisting of sports to their sick purposes.
We hate them because they are evil.
We who follow the Blazer Ethics know what it is to work, to sacrifice, and to never, ever settle. We know that sports are only a symbol and not a substitute for reality. We are ethical, we are grounded, we are the future.
To hell with the Tide. No one can be "a fan of both programs," for there is no compromise with evil.
My brothers, my sisters,
The first misconception is this: UAB and Alabama-Tuscaloosa are not rivals. Though it is true that in 1982 Sports Illustrated named this as the most heated rivalry in America, “even though Alabama is deathly afraid to play UAB” to quote said magazine, they are not a rival. A rival is someone with whom you engage in heated but friendly competition. I do not hope they lose their games: I am affronted that such a corrupt institution is allowed to play competitive intercollegiate sports at all.
In the dawn times, when Memphis and I were students, we had a new program. We welcomed Gene Bartow from UCLA. At his first public appearance, Tide supporters printed and handed out flyers with pictures of Gene and Richard Nixon, asking, “Would you buy a used car from either of these men?” It was the bammers who struck the first blow, it was the bammers who inaugurated their relationship with UAB athletics with the childish smearing that has been their way ever since.
This is not, as the on-their-knees apologists in the so-called local news media would have it, a myth. I have one here before me.
My brother for life is incorrect; in the earliest years Alabama-Tuscaloosa DID play UAB in baseball. It was when Harry “the Hat” Walker’s team utterly destroyed the crimson ones that the Drunken Bear declared that Alabama-Tuscaloosa would never, ever play UAB in anything. For the past 24 years, bammers have attempted to fellate a dead bear back to life. Many appear to feel that, in his honor, they must destroy anything that comes out of UAB.
As UAB basketball gained success after success, so did crimson envy rage ever hotter. And in those days we truly were the “commuter school” for which we were ridiculed. Our students worked, usually 40 hour low-paying service jobs, while theirs lay drunk on Fraternity Row, their bills happily paid by Daddy and their careers fully assured by The Machine. On weekends, there were bars for them, and bars for us. We did not go into the Courtyard; when they dared venture into the Nick, we beat the living hell out of their izod-wearing preppie asses. It was class warfare, pure and simple, class warfare that continues today.
The state of Alabama and city of Birmingham are beset by social, economic and political problems. Anyone not blind or stupid knows this. And anyone not blind or stupid knows that this is the result of over a century of misrule by the “Big Mules,” the politically-connected families that provide our so-called leaders in business and politics, the degenerate third- and fourth-generation incompetents and slackards who have driven our state into Third world misery. And what forges their connections? The University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa and The Machine.
Tuscaloosa is the past. We will NEVER recover from the disastrous legacy of George Corley Wallace with leadership produced in the cesspool of the UAT-SGA. Poverty, oppression, despair – these are the legacy of “class” and “tradition.”
UAB represents a hopeful future, a green-and-gold vision of brotherhood and prosperity for all our citizens. UAB has never been segregated; Tuscaloosa is the very symbol of American racist shame. UAB gave the world fiber-optic technology; Tuscaloosa gave it the Tijuana Hotplate. UAB discovered the origins of AIDS; Tuscaloosa grads wrote the state’s 1901 constitution.
The lesson of Tuscaloosa is that success does not come from hard work, it does not come from talent, skill or the application of these qualities. “If at first you don’t succeed,” goes the Tide mantra, “ask Daddy to buy it for you.” Athletic programs are symbols, and what theirs symbolizes is the rot at their hearts. When they cannot win, they cheat. And when that fails, they just make up championships.
And often this cheating has centered on UAB. They bought Ennis Whatley after he had committed to UAB. They bought Alfonso “Buck” Johnson, roommate of Mike Davis, so blatantly that his mother demanded he take the payoff and sign with the Tide IN FRONT OF THE NEWS MEDIA. They bought player after player, and yet they have little to show for it but flocks of alumni in the NBA and proud claims of the Sweet Sixteen. After our glorious victory over Virginia in 1982 to advance to the Elite Eight, the bammer-controlled state legislature celebrated by deleting funding for dorms from the upcoming budget.
We hate them for their arrogance. We hate them for selling this state’s poor on the notion that they can exchange a satisfying, fulfilled life for one of poverty and ignorance as long as they can wear bammer shirts and hats. We hate them for the lies, for the criminal acts, for the sodomization of this state’s people. We hate them for their moral cowardice, for their twisting of sports to their sick purposes.
We hate them because they are evil.
We who follow the Blazer Ethics know what it is to work, to sacrifice, and to never, ever settle. We know that sports are only a symbol and not a substitute for reality. We are ethical, we are grounded, we are the future.
To hell with the Tide. No one can be "a fan of both programs," for there is no compromise with evil.
#2
Quote:
UAB Band Dad
a response to blazerfan13:
Unfortunately, there are many lazy journalists out there. If they can cruise message boards and find something of interest and then pick up the phone and confirm it, presto, they have today's column. We've seen too many subjects discussed on this board appear shortly after in the Snews to think it does not happen. It does. That's not necessarily a bad thing, journalism is all about the gathering of information, and I know of few places you can find as much information regarding Blazer Athletics as you can here. I'd rather have our posts mined for Blazer stories that make the paper than read yet another column about what Nick Saban had for breakfast. As to our ignorance and inaccuracy, I know that I personally have stood beside Attalla and talked to Coach Davis. Things that he said made this board and were discussed. The only way we were "uninformed and pretending to be in the know" is to the extent that either we were told things he wanted to get out, spin he wanted out there, or things that had a percentage chance of happening that fell through. There are a number of people on this board that have a pretty high level of access. While you can't believe everything that some yammerhead posts, those of us who have been here a while know that there are people you can pretty well trust to know what's going on, and who will post that information if it is appropriate and if their sources don't mind it being released. Frankly, b13, people like Attallablaze, Jesse, BlazerMatt, and a number of others have far more credibility here than you do. Your inside access is tempered by a lack of knowledge of the program's history and a grumpy ill-temper that paints with an awfully broad brush. If those of us here who disagree with you from time to time attacked you in the way you have other people here, both individually and in large groups, you'd be getting flamed right and left. I appreciate your passion, but quite frankly you are much like the people you're slamming, you post a lot of questionable stuff that is largely your opinion rather than solid inside info. That's not to say you have no valid opinions or solid info, simply that I have to weed through the bluster, armwaving, and misinformation to mine it. Try calming down, being less pissed off all the time, and just expressing your opinion and presenting your facts and you'll make more of a dent in group opinion on the board. Just my $.02...
a response to blazerfan13:
Unfortunately, there are many lazy journalists out there. If they can cruise message boards and find something of interest and then pick up the phone and confirm it, presto, they have today's column. We've seen too many subjects discussed on this board appear shortly after in the Snews to think it does not happen. It does. That's not necessarily a bad thing, journalism is all about the gathering of information, and I know of few places you can find as much information regarding Blazer Athletics as you can here. I'd rather have our posts mined for Blazer stories that make the paper than read yet another column about what Nick Saban had for breakfast. As to our ignorance and inaccuracy, I know that I personally have stood beside Attalla and talked to Coach Davis. Things that he said made this board and were discussed. The only way we were "uninformed and pretending to be in the know" is to the extent that either we were told things he wanted to get out, spin he wanted out there, or things that had a percentage chance of happening that fell through. There are a number of people on this board that have a pretty high level of access. While you can't believe everything that some yammerhead posts, those of us who have been here a while know that there are people you can pretty well trust to know what's going on, and who will post that information if it is appropriate and if their sources don't mind it being released. Frankly, b13, people like Attallablaze, Jesse, BlazerMatt, and a number of others have far more credibility here than you do. Your inside access is tempered by a lack of knowledge of the program's history and a grumpy ill-temper that paints with an awfully broad brush. If those of us here who disagree with you from time to time attacked you in the way you have other people here, both individually and in large groups, you'd be getting flamed right and left. I appreciate your passion, but quite frankly you are much like the people you're slamming, you post a lot of questionable stuff that is largely your opinion rather than solid inside info. That's not to say you have no valid opinions or solid info, simply that I have to weed through the bluster, armwaving, and misinformation to mine it. Try calming down, being less pissed off all the time, and just expressing your opinion and presenting your facts and you'll make more of a dent in group opinion on the board. Just my $.02...
#3
Quote:
58-56
My brothers, my sisters,
It pains me to read the words of good Blazer brothers and sisters, stating that we must kneel before the false gods of Tuscaloosa and be thankful they allow our university to exist. That we must offer no insult to fine gentlemen like Paul Bryant Jr., like Jim Wilson III, like the other Roman-numeraled who were born on third base and believe they hit a triple.
This repulsive crawling, I read, must be endured so that we might, someday, maybe, convince a handful of bammers to endure a wretched few hours in our stadium, that they might consent to make our beloved UAB their second choice for college football.
This is, my brothers and sisters, a mistaken belief bordering on heresy. And I shall tell you why.
First and foremost, it ignores the basic principle of modern marketing, America's gift to the world and the foundation of American cultural power: branding.
College football is not a commodity, though we seem to insist on treating it as such. People buy things to fulfill two basic desires: they need it, or they want it. No one *needs* college football. Therefore, it must be marketed as something we want. We need water, we need food. If we cannot obtain our first choice of food, we will buy our second - for we literally have no choice if we wish to avoid death.
No one, my brothers and sisters, has ever died from a lack of college football. Luxuries like college football, like fine leather shoes, like candies, like literature, must be marketed in totally different fashion. If I cannot have my Franziskaner Weizen, I will not soil my body with Bud Lite. I simply will go without beer.
So it is with bammers. Gene Bartow saw the numbers, saw that UAT-Auburn could sell 500,000 tickets to the Tractor Bowl, and he did reason that this left 410,000+ football fans unfulfilled. If he could lure but 10 percent of them to Legion Field ...
This was the fallacy. These 410,000 denied tickets did not want generic college football. They wanted *bammer* football. They do not want "Bammer Lite," as some of our misguided brothers would have us become. They want to drink until they puke, paint themselves red, throw objects at opposing players and sell their souls to Saban who scorns them. They want to brag of their 76 national championships (12 in the 1960's alone!), they want to boast of their "class" that most could not spell if spotted the c and the l. They want to be bammers. They do not want to be Blazers.
Karl Rove taught the lesson in 2000 and 2004. You do not elect a president by convincing the other guy's voters to switch sides. Bammer the other party's voters. Bammer the undecided. You find more of your own and get them to the polls, and most of all you target people who don't know they're your voters yet.
Yes, we have a handful of recovering bammers among us. They are the exception. They are not the future.
What does it mean to be a Blazer? It means that we do not settle. It means that we have a vision of the future, that we believe that good things will come from Birmingham, Alabama and that we will work to make it so. We believe in the values of hard work and self-respect. We know what it is to suffer, we know what it is to overcome. We do not count accident of birth as success.
What, then, is our future? Where shall we find the believers to build the program we know is necessary as a symbol to lift this community into the front rank of the world's cities?
It is among those who hold no strong allegiance, among the casual fans. The alumni who have not attended a game since they were students. Transplants from other cities. People who can come to share our belief and understand that Blazer atheltics are not an end in themselves, but merely a symbol of our belief in our community and ourselves.
These people are not bammers. To hell with the bammers. Let them dance among the ruins, let them molest goats, bammer their cousins, smack their children/nephews around and drink wine from screw-top bottles. Let them believe they can fellate the rotted corpse of the drunken Bear back to life and with him his times of Jim Crow, sexual repression and 3.2 beer.
We all know the people we need, these people who are not bammers. We all know six of these people. If we show them that good things can come from Birmingham, Alabama, if we bring them to share our belief in our Blazers and ourselves, then we can build the others things we desire and we deserve: safe streets. Quality schools. Brewpubs with craft beer that did not first pass through a horse. And most of all, a monorail. We deserve a monorail.
If we settle, if we are content to be Bammer Lite, then we shall have no monorail, but only a battered pickup truck with "'S' The Coach" stuck to the cracked rear window.
My brothers, my sisters, I want that monorail.
My brothers, my sisters,
It pains me to read the words of good Blazer brothers and sisters, stating that we must kneel before the false gods of Tuscaloosa and be thankful they allow our university to exist. That we must offer no insult to fine gentlemen like Paul Bryant Jr., like Jim Wilson III, like the other Roman-numeraled who were born on third base and believe they hit a triple.
This repulsive crawling, I read, must be endured so that we might, someday, maybe, convince a handful of bammers to endure a wretched few hours in our stadium, that they might consent to make our beloved UAB their second choice for college football.
This is, my brothers and sisters, a mistaken belief bordering on heresy. And I shall tell you why.
First and foremost, it ignores the basic principle of modern marketing, America's gift to the world and the foundation of American cultural power: branding.
College football is not a commodity, though we seem to insist on treating it as such. People buy things to fulfill two basic desires: they need it, or they want it. No one *needs* college football. Therefore, it must be marketed as something we want. We need water, we need food. If we cannot obtain our first choice of food, we will buy our second - for we literally have no choice if we wish to avoid death.
No one, my brothers and sisters, has ever died from a lack of college football. Luxuries like college football, like fine leather shoes, like candies, like literature, must be marketed in totally different fashion. If I cannot have my Franziskaner Weizen, I will not soil my body with Bud Lite. I simply will go without beer.
So it is with bammers. Gene Bartow saw the numbers, saw that UAT-Auburn could sell 500,000 tickets to the Tractor Bowl, and he did reason that this left 410,000+ football fans unfulfilled. If he could lure but 10 percent of them to Legion Field ...
This was the fallacy. These 410,000 denied tickets did not want generic college football. They wanted *bammer* football. They do not want "Bammer Lite," as some of our misguided brothers would have us become. They want to drink until they puke, paint themselves red, throw objects at opposing players and sell their souls to Saban who scorns them. They want to brag of their 76 national championships (12 in the 1960's alone!), they want to boast of their "class" that most could not spell if spotted the c and the l. They want to be bammers. They do not want to be Blazers.
Karl Rove taught the lesson in 2000 and 2004. You do not elect a president by convincing the other guy's voters to switch sides. Bammer the other party's voters. Bammer the undecided. You find more of your own and get them to the polls, and most of all you target people who don't know they're your voters yet.
Yes, we have a handful of recovering bammers among us. They are the exception. They are not the future.
What does it mean to be a Blazer? It means that we do not settle. It means that we have a vision of the future, that we believe that good things will come from Birmingham, Alabama and that we will work to make it so. We believe in the values of hard work and self-respect. We know what it is to suffer, we know what it is to overcome. We do not count accident of birth as success.
What, then, is our future? Where shall we find the believers to build the program we know is necessary as a symbol to lift this community into the front rank of the world's cities?
It is among those who hold no strong allegiance, among the casual fans. The alumni who have not attended a game since they were students. Transplants from other cities. People who can come to share our belief and understand that Blazer atheltics are not an end in themselves, but merely a symbol of our belief in our community and ourselves.
These people are not bammers. To hell with the bammers. Let them dance among the ruins, let them molest goats, bammer their cousins, smack their children/nephews around and drink wine from screw-top bottles. Let them believe they can fellate the rotted corpse of the drunken Bear back to life and with him his times of Jim Crow, sexual repression and 3.2 beer.
We all know the people we need, these people who are not bammers. We all know six of these people. If we show them that good things can come from Birmingham, Alabama, if we bring them to share our belief in our Blazers and ourselves, then we can build the others things we desire and we deserve: safe streets. Quality schools. Brewpubs with craft beer that did not first pass through a horse. And most of all, a monorail. We deserve a monorail.
If we settle, if we are content to be Bammer Lite, then we shall have no monorail, but only a battered pickup truck with "'S' The Coach" stuck to the cracked rear window.
My brothers, my sisters, I want that monorail.