Prologue: I showed up for an interview and ended up inside something I wasn’t supposed to see or hear. What followed wasn’t just a round of golf. It was a behind the scenes conversation about restoring Bama where the Bama power-brokers she rightfully belongs: Back on top of the college football mountain.
Topics ranged from installing a College Football Czar and Bama’s grip on ESPN, and the SEC, to Indiana’s alleged film hacking, NIL/Portal Chaos, and yes even Beth Mowins and of course— blonde sideline reporters and a regrettable night in a Pensacola strip joint.
What follows is a retelling of what may—or may not—have happened that morning on Hole 3 at Oxmoor Valley’s Ridge Course.
Cart Path Only
It was a bright and brisk Monday morning, and we were the only golfers on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail Oxmoor Valley – Ridge Course. The rain had moved out overnight, the air was clean, and the place felt like it had been cleared out just for us.
Which of course it turns out, it was just us.
The Ridge, every last hole of it, had been quietly rented out by a well-connected Bama booster. The purpose? To host a discreet round of golf with a few national college football media figures—and have a very real, very off-the-record conversation about the current and future state of Alabama football.
Oxmoor is considered a championship-caliber course, heavily wooded, flanked by towering pines, and punishing elevation changes at every hole. Last night a big cold front blew through the area, raining hard throughout the night. This resulted in some of the dreaded words all golfers hated: “Cart Path Only”.
We decided to walk all 18 holes.
As for me? I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I’m Just a regional author from the scenic Paint Rock River Valley with a few books to my name—mostly on Bama fan violence, delusion, and the SEC’s most dysfunctional tribal tendencies. No real reason I should’ve been anywhere near the Bama machine. Until I was.
This morning, I was at Finebaum’s Birmingham podcast/radio studio, to my surprise he had accepted my request for an interview for background research and comments for my forthcoming book called Red-on-Crimson: Bama Fan Fratricide.
Except I had the day wrong. Total mix-up on my end. Nothing more than being in the right place at the wrong time.
Well, anyway—nobody was more surprised than me when Paul asked if I wanted to play golf that morning. He gave me the basics about the round, but not much else.
I’m considered to be a scratch golfer and always carry my clubs with me. This was perfect.
He said one of the others golfers had been forced to cancel and they needed someone to play right now. Here I was, we could knock out the interview and play a round of golf.
I found out later it was a former Bama QB, now working as a national ESPN Color Analyst, who had managed to ruffle the feathers of several high-powered Bama boosters with a few too many “objective” takes during the broadcast.
I guess he wore out his welcome with the Bama faithful after some of the comments during the Indiana-Oregon game about Alabama were perceived as “inappropriate”. One could compare it when Coach Saban pulled him off the field after his third interception of the game and replaced him with AJ McCarron.
Leave a Reply