That was for the year that they weren't as good. I think there was just a little too much pot smoking, and a little too much big head.
The magazine is. You're right.
But I was thinking about the team that was the #1 seed in the South.
I really thought we'd turned the basketball corner then. Same as I did when we had Barkley and Person. Back then Bama had Bobby Hurt. They always claimed it was some rivalry and Hurt was better than Charles. I knew where Bobby partied. I knew how much weed and coke he did. I knew better.
Don't know if any of you remember (or are old enough to remember) but Hurt was just part of the perpetual cheating that goes on there. Just like TJ Yeldon, he and/or his parents were threatened with financial ruin if he didn't sign with the Tide. Just like Yeldon, he'd gotten money from Bama boosters over his high school career and they threatened to make him pay it all back - plus interest - and that they'd expose him and ruin his eligibility. Just like Yeldon, his coach, his principal all conspired to keep him from going to Maryland or Louisville or Hawaii. Just like Yeldon, all of a sudden he's walled up in the office of the coach and everything the kid's ever said is being contradicted by the coach. Maryland's coach reported that he and his staff were stalked by Bama supporters and felt threatened.
Supposedly Hurt signed LOIs with Maryland and later Hawaii, but his coach tore them up and gave him the one from Alabama.
This was the beginning of Finebaum actually being a good journalist (as he was at the very beginning of his career). He interviewed Hurt before he signed with Alabama and had him on record talking about being threatened by Tide supporters if he didn't sign. Finebaum set up an interview with the principal who allegedly paid and threatened Hurt -- he resigned the next day and disappeared.
After it was all over, Wimp Sanderson said Bama performed an internal investigation and 'didn't find nothing wrong.' That was as far as it ever went.
He was a good player, but never lived up to his promise. I think he vanished overseas after college and then got arrested for something later on.