Happy Tuesday, everyone. Alabama has a textbook trap game tonight at Texas, coming off a hard fought road win and followed by what has to be the biggest regular season basketball game between Alabama and Auburn in rivalry history. Plan to pay big money if you want to go to Coleman on Saturday.
Is it possible to get a seat in Coleman for this weekend? Absolutely. But it won’t come cheap.
As of Monday afternoon, both Seat Geek and StubHub had tickets available, but the cheapest between the two sat at $287. Some tickets on each site sat comfortably in the four-figure range, with the most expensive listings between $2,341 and $3,574.
Raise your hands if you ever thought it would cost three bills just to get into a regular season Alabama basketball game. Liars.
The GameDay circus will be in town, as you’d expect with the current top two in the polls going at it.
Feb. 15 location
“College GameDay Covered by State Farm” is headed to Tuscaloosa on Saturday for a matchup between Auburn and Alabama. Hosted by Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Seth Greenberg, Andraya Carter and Jay Williams, the premier pregame show airs from 10 a.m. to noon ET on ESPN, ESPN+ and Disney+.
But we gotta beat Texas first. Surely the Tuscaloosa News will be responsible about this.
The SEC wants to make basketball Saturdays mean more, like football game days. The showdown between the No. 3 Crimson Tide and the No. 1 Tigers looms as one of the biggest matchups of the 2024-25 season.
Alabama hosts Auburn on Saturday, Feb. 15, at 3 p.m. CT at Coleman Coliseum.
SEC men’s basketball associate commissioner Garth Glissman told the Tuscaloosa News that it was a “conscious decision across the conference” to make weekends interesting in hopes that they’d keep gamedays reserved after football helmets have been hung up for the winter.
“My goal is that we can harness the excitement and energy generated by SEC football, and then just carry that same passion and fandom into the winter so that SEC fans have grown so accustomed to, you know, cheering on their team all fall,” Glissman said. “It doesn’t have to stop when football season is over.”
Damn you, Emilee Smarr. And not one word written yet over there about Texas.
At least Nate Oats gets it.
“Stay locked in, the same thing we’ve been doing,” Oats said. He showed the team a clip of football coaching legend Nick Saban on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” speaking about coaches calling him and asking what he does differently to get ready for a national championship.
“He almost looked at ‘em like it was a stupid question,” Oats recalled of Saban. “Like, ‘You didn’t just have a big game last week? You weren’t getting ready for a big game the week before?’ “
Oats thinks it’d be just as “stupid” for Alabama to let the rankings change their mindset as it is to ask the man who brought six national football titles to Tuscaloosa such a question.
“We’re gonna keep these guys preparing for Texas as if it was a national championship game.”
Auburn has its own dangerous one in the Vanderbilt dungeon.
In football news, we’ve learned that Nick Sheridan will coach the quarterbacks while Ryan Grubb focuses on coordinating coordination.
Nick Sheridan’s role on the Alabama football coaching staff in 2025 is set.
According to multiple reports, Sheridan will remain the Crimson Tide’s quarterbacks coach after the hire of former Seattle Seahawks and Washington offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb to be Kalen DeBoer’s offensive coordinator.
Grubb has been DeBoer’s quarterbacks coach at Fresno State and with the Huskies, while also serving as offensive coordinator.
Sheridan worked with Grubb at Washington in 2022-23 as the Huskies’ tight ends coach.
Sheridan’s pet project will of course be Keelon Russell, for whom he served as the primary recruiter. Try not to like the kid after these comments.
“Understand that your profile is your profile. Understand that your name is your name. Building that is the most successful thing that you can do, especially with how the NIL space is getting bigger. The performances of the platforms are getting way more advanced. NIL is something that takes away from the aspects of football. Somebody told me, focus on the key things.”
Russell took it as a prime opportunity to set his priorities straight for DeBoer to take note of despite having an impressive NIL.
“NIL is a great thing, but focus on your key things and NIL’s gonna come. All the stuff’s gonna come. Focus on football, and the NIL space is gonna come. Your profile is your profile. You do good, your profile is gonna be on the rise,” Russell said.
“I have so many visions,” Russell said. “I have dreams, I have everything that I feel like is gonna be come a reality. Like, I have a dream about going to beat Auburn on the road, I have a dream about beating Georgia on the road, I have a dream about getting confetti dropped on my head. I have a dream about standing on that stage and giving a speech about how I led Alabama football to a national championship. All of that tied in, it’s just so much that you’ve got to do to make those dreams come to reality.
“The work ethic, the constant waking up at 6:30, waking up at 5:00, it’s all tied into one thing and that’s to win a national championship. It’s amazing out there. … It’s just amazing.”
We have all those visions and dreams too, Keelon.
That’s about it for now. Have a great day.
Roll Tide.
