<p>Crimson Tide’s greatest year explained by faces and places, camaraderie and even cookies that feed a hunger to achieve</p>
<p>Don Kausler Jr./Tuscaloosa Bureau, The Birmingham News, Press-Register, and The Huntsville Times </p>
<p>“I want everybody here to know, this is not the end. This is the beginning.”</p>
<ul>
<li>Nick Saban,</li>
</ul>
<p>Jan. 16, 2010</p>
<p>TUSCALOOSA, Alabama - Alabama wins its second national championship in college football in the past three seasons on Jan. 9. This is the beginning. Three months later, coach Nick Saban gives a pep talk to the Alabama gymnastics team.</p>
<p>The Alabama gymnastics team wins its second consecutive national championship on April 21, Saban speaks at a celebration a week later, and three weeks after that, gymnastics coach Sarah Patterson delivers advice - and homemade cookies - to the Alabama golf team, which goes on to win its first national championship.</p>
<p>Alabama softball coach Patrick Murphy’s team hears from men’s basketball coach Anthony Grant, who then brings elite recruit Devonta Pollard to a softball game. Eight weeks later, Pollard announces he will play for Alabama.</p>
<p>And the softball team goes on to win its first national championship.</p>
<p>It’s a grand slam.</p>
<p>“This is, no doubt, the greatest year in University of Alabama sports history,” said Ronny Robertson, the associate athletic director in charge of development.</p>
<p>Like never before, success has bred unprecedented success. A school that never had won more than one national championship in one academic year suddenly won four within five months. The men’s golf team almost made it a Southeastern Conference-record five national championships, but it fell one hole short in the NCAA Championships match-play finals.</p>
<p>“It’s like the glory days here,” said Jim Carabin, the general manager of Crimson Tide Sports Marketing. “It’s nice to be part of the Golden Age.”</p>
<p>Golden, indeed. T-shirts were sold that celebrated an SEC championship in softball. More were sold that proclaimed a World Series-bound team. When the last strike crossed the plate at 12:31 a.m. Thursday in Oklahoma City, an email blast was sent to 150,000 addresses marketing 20-25 products ready to go online. </p>
<p>“The softball merchandise has been flying off the shelves,” Carabin said. “People have probably got their wardrobes set for the rest of the summer with their championship T-shirts. I guess you can just about rotate one every day.”</p>
<p>The market for 2011 football championship merchandise, by the way, is running 4-5 percent ahead of 2009, when Alabama also claimed the BCS title.</p>
<p>Robertson directs the Crimson Tide Foundation that has been raising money primarily for endowed scholarships. Talk about an easy job. …</p>
<p>“The excitement and enthusiasm that these four national championships have created parlays into people wanting to support the teams and be a part of something that’s pretty big, and bigger than they probably are,” said Robertson, who played linebacker for the Crimson Tide in the early 1970s.</p>
<p>“It’s a good time for the Crimson Tide Foundation.”</p>
<p>How did this best of time happen?</p>
<p>Who gets the credit? What is in the water in T-Town, now known as Title Town? When did the Tide start to turn? Where did this motivation, inspiration and perspiration come from? Why now?</p>
<p>It’s explained by faces and places, camaraderie and even cookies that feed a hunger to achieve.</p>
<p>It’s faces and facilities</p>
<p>Mal Moore spreads the credit. He starts with former UA president Robert Witt, now the chancellor of the University of Alabama Systems, and board of trustees members, then mentions coaches, athletes, alumni and fans.</p>
<p>What about Alabama’s athletics director? Colleagues are quick to credit Moore.</p>
<p>“It goes back to the top, the vision he had to, No. 1, improve the facilities, and by improving the facilities, he was able to attract the top coaches in the country in each respective sport,” Robertson said of Moore.</p>
<p>“And once the coaches got here, due to the facilities being in such great shape, they were able to recruit the top student-athletes. You get all of those three working together, it makes for a winning combination.”</p>
<p>Bryant-Denny Stadium has been expanded twice by Moore, and cosmetic improvements are dramatic. Coleman Coliseum has been revamped. Rhoads Stadium is a college softball jewel. The Jerry Pate Golf Complex sells Alabama to top prospects.</p>
<p>As remarkable as upgrading facilities during NCAA probation and a recession might be, Moore hired Saban. That could be a crowning achievement. Other coaches say they feed off of Saban’s success.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about that,” Saban said. “I think we’ve got some really good coaches in some really good programs who have some really good, talented players. They’ve done a nice job of developing them, and that’s probably why they’re having success.”</p>
<p>The football coach is too modest, Patterson and softball coach Patrick Murphy suggest.</p>
<p>“If he doesn’t win, I don’t think any of us win at the level that we’re at,” Murphy said.</p>
<p>Football is supreme, Patterson adds.</p>
<p>“Because of the exposure, the financing, everything that it brings to the university, that’s what’s allowed us to build facilities and fund our programs at the highest level,” she said.</p>
<p>Patterson has won six national championships in 34 seasons - three more than Saban, who won one at LSU before coming to Alabama in 2007 - yet she leaves no doubt who sets the tone in the department.</p>
<p>“He has given a mentality to our department that nothing short of winning is acceptable,” she said.</p>
<p>Then there’s more applause for Moore.</p>
<p>“I one time had an athletic director that called me in and told me that I needed to relax and enjoy my championships, because we just couldn’t keep up with the Joneses,” Patterson said. “I responded to him, ‘With all due respect, sir, we are the Joneses.’ And that’s how I feel. If our facilities are the best, that helps you attract the best athletes.”</p>
<p>Moore said he appreciates the praise.</p>
<p>“But it took a lot of people to make this happen,” he said.</p>
<p>He isn’t forgetting the people who buy tickets and T-shirts and more.</p>
<p>“We’ve got great fans,” Moore said. “They expect great things. I hope that never changes. When it doesn’t matter to them, then you are in trouble.”</p>
<p>It’s the camaraderie</p>
<p>A year ago, Murphy left Alabama. Three days after being introduced as LSU’s coach, he realized he had made a mistake and returned to Alabama.</p>
<p>“When I knew Patrick was coming back, I called Anthony (Grant), and he said, ‘I’m on my way to the airport,’” Patterson said. “There’s a sense of family.”</p>
<p>When the softball team made its triumphant return Thursday to Tuscaloosa, the crowd that greeted the champs included two brand new women’s basketball assistant coaches.</p>
<p>It hasn’t always been that way.</p>
<p>“Everybody did their own thing,” Murphy said, contrasting the spirit when he came to Alabama 1996 as an assistant coach to the camaraderie now.</p>
<p>How tight are these coaches now? Grant called Murphy three times during the Women’s College World Series.</p>
<p>“If it’s a voicemail message, I’ll play it over the loudspeaker on the bus,” Murphy said. “Same thing with Saban’s, too.”</p>
<p>In the minutes after his team won its national championship, women’s golf coach Mic Potter missed a call from Saban. Potter told Patterson that he was saving the voicemail.</p>
<p>“I said, ‘You know what? I’ve got mine,’” Patterson said.</p>
<p>The culture has changed on the third floor of Coleman Coliseum, which Patterson now calls the “Hallway of Champions.”</p>
<p>“Personally, I love having championship coaches around me,” she said. “I want to be surrounded by people that want to do the same things that I want to do.”</p>
<p>Saban does his part.</p>
<p>“I speak to them, I help try to recruit, I do whatever I can to support it,” he said. “In turn, I get lessons in tennis and golf and everything us old folks try to do.”</p>
<p>Murphy attests to Saban’s recruiting help.</p>
<p>“He’s 2 for 2 with softball recruits,” Murphy said.</p>
<p>One is a prized signee from Texas whose father played in the NFL.</p>
<p>Saban’s message?</p>
<p>“To play at the top level, to be a student-athlete, there’s no place better than Alabama,” Murphy said. “He invites them to sit down in his office. … It’s a neat thing to see, because he’s very at ease. I’m nervous, but he makes everybody else very at-home, and I think the parents really enjoy it.”</p>
<p>It’s the cookies</p>
<p>Patterson baked three batches of chocolate chip cookies and took them to the softball team before it flew to Oklahoma City for its eighth WCWS appearance.</p>
<p>“You do whatever you can do to help another program be successful,” she said.</p>
<p>Patterson then attended the games. Her daughter Jordan is a backup catcher.</p>
<p>“I was a whole lot more nervous as a parent watching, because you have no control,” she said.</p>
<p>Is there something special in that cookie batter?</p>
<p>“You bet! They’re the championship cookies,” Patterson said. “We raised money selling those cookies on the Quad for Hurricane Katrina. Those are legendary cookies.”</p>
<p>She does more than feed athletes treats. She feeds them tweets, such as her favorite quote from Saban. It first came via Twitter from Tide long snapper Carson Tinker: “You’re either hungry or you’re satisfied, you can’t be both.”</p>
<p>Alabama’s championship teams are presented their rings at football halftime ceremonies. Some Tide athletes hunger for being recognized in front of 101,000 people.</p>
<p>“That is one of the highlights of their career,” Patterson said. “I’ll never forget, one year we were getting our rings and Morgan Dennis said, ‘I’m more nervous standing out on this football field getting ready to march out in front of 101,000 people than I am on the balance beam at the national championships.’”</p>
<p>Three teams will get to experience that euphoria this fall on separate Saturdays.</p>
<p>“I can’t wait for the year when we don’t have enough home football games for all the championship teams we have,” Patterson said. “The next thing is, we need to get these three women’s teams to the White House to see President Obama.”</p>
<p>How hungry is Patterson? From Oklahoma City, she went to St. Louis to recruit at a big event. She and assistant coach Dana Duckworth entered the arena wearing T-shirts that played off of a Nike slogan: “Just Do It … And Do It Again.” The first “A” in “Again” was Alabama’s trademark.</p>
<p>“And it has ‘National Champions’ on it,” Patterson said. “That’s what you do. And you have your rings on.”</p>
<p>How hungry is Murphy? Less than six hours after his arrival Thursday in Tuscaloosa, he was boarding a plane in Birmingham to go recruiting in California.</p>
<p>“That’s what great coaches have to do,” Patterson said. “I will tell you, this will be the most enjoyable recruiting trip of Patrick Murphy’s career.”</p>
<p>Moore agrees.</p>
<p>“What better time to go out recruiting than right after you’ve won the national championship?” he said. “You’ve got a little something to talk about.”</p>
<p>So do Crimson Tide fans. Robertson hinted at a celebration to come.</p>
<p>“There will be a little brainstorming right now of maybe a special type of fundraiser that gives recognition to Coach Moore for the great job he’s done and to the teams and to the coaches for the success they’ve had,” Robertson said. “We want to give the fans an opportunity to show their appreciation.”</p>
<p>He knows fans will hunger for more success.</p>
<p>“This is just the beginning,” Robertson said. “I think people have heard that quote before, but we can use it again here.”</p>