NCAA Football alabama Crimson Tide

On Oct. 24, Justin Paschall, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Southside Elementary in Lebanon, Tenn., went to his first Alabama-Tennessee football game. He traveled to Tuscaloosa with his grandfather, Ray Todd, as huge of an Alabama fan as there is in the Southland and two cousins, also Alabama fans. Justin says his first question upon being told that his grandfather had tickets for the game, his first ever Tennessee game, was, "Can I wear my orange jacket?"

Grandpa Ray Todd, Alabama born and bred and now residing in Tennessee, said that he could wear his orange, and on Friday the foursome traveled to Tuscaloosa for the game. Come Saturday, Justin woke up and took wearing orange to a whole new level.

Alabama's offense has mellowed over the past three games.

The Crimson Tide has registered only a pair of rushing touchdowns in victories over Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Ten trips into the red zone have resulted in eight field goals. The passing game hasn't featured many deep throws, and Alabama's Wildcat offense, which started as a gimmick, has become more relevant.

Third-ranked Alabama realizes it will need a better all-around effort on Saturday to beat No. 9 LSU, the only remaining ranked team on the Crimson Tide's schedule. The Crimson Tide can clinch the SEC West title with a win and would then meet No. 1 Florida on Dec. 5 in the SEC title game.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Crist will come again ... in four to six months.

Notre Dame learned the fates of both back-up quarterback Dayne Crist and wide receiver Michael Floyd on Monday and the results were mixed.

Crist, a sophomore who went down in the fourth quarter of Notre Dame's 40-14 win against Washington State, learned on Monday that he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament of his right knee. Floyd, who broke his left collarbone against Michigan State in the season's third game, was cleared to play.

On Tuesday, Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis confirmed that Crist, who had an MRI on Monday, had torn his ACL and that he would have surgery on Friday. Weis said that the Irish staff consulted "the guru in Alabama" (Dr. James Andrews) and that the prognosis was for a four-to-six month rehab. That likely keeps Crist out of spring football.

"I know one thing," Weis said, concerning Crist's return. "We'll be conservative."

In the wake of Tennessee's 12-10 loss to Alabama, Lane Kiffin expressed displeasure over the penalty disparity -- Alabama received one penalty for 10 yards while Tennessee received eight for 68 -- the lack of a penalty on Terrance Cody on the game's final play, and even suggested that the referees were the reason he chose to kick the field goal from 44 yards rather than run another play to move closer.

"You run another play and you throw an interception or they throw another flag on us," Kiffin said Sunday. "I wasn't going to let the refs lose the game for us there and some magical flag appear."

The SEC fired back today, reprimanding the Tennessee coach.

When you take a road trip as a fan, you dream about moments like these. Four seconds to play, a hated rival on the ropes, your team lined up for a final play with victory or defeat hinging entirely on that one play. After over three hours of even football, it all comes down to this one final snap. And you want one thing more than any other: complete silence to soak through the stadium while your team pours onto the field in celebration, their celebratory shouts no louder than the dribble of a basketball on a court hundreds of yards away, echoing over the stunned home crowd. For a moment you might even contemplate, like I did, simply closing your eyes and allowing the crowd reaction to tell the story of the field goal. But instead, I watched.

Tennessee came achingly close on Saturday to delivering the most agonizing loss to Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium in a couple of decades, maybe ever. But then they ran into a mountain of a man.

FanHouse writer Brett McMurphy shares his Top 25 ballot each Sunday morning.

College football's version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome will be played out on Halloween night in Stillwater, Okla., and Eugene, Ore.

In Stillwater, Oklahoma State hosts Texas in a battle for the Big 12 South lead, while USC visits Oregon in a huge Pac-10 contest in Eugene. All four teams are ranked among the Associated Press' top-13 teams this week.

In a slight variation of Thunderdome, "two teams enter, one team leaves" with their national title hopes alive.

The winner of each game is still in the running for a spot in the BCS title game, while the loser can start making alternate bowl plans.

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For Alabama, it came down to a physics problem.

In the last seconds of what suddenly became a white-knuckle 'Third Saturday' tilt, Terrence Cody, the Crimson Tide's city block of a nose tackle, punched through the Tennessee line and came face to foot with Vols' kicker Daniel Lincoln. All that was left to was to see whether something the weight of an upright piano could rise high enough into the air to bring down a 44-yard-field goal try.

So, when the would-be game-winning kick caromed off Cody's armpit, sealing Alabama's 12-10 win, the nose tackle ripped off his helmet with two hands and let loose a massive yelp that must have echoed from Tuscaloosa and Tuscany.

He hadn't just beaten Tennessee. He'd done a number on Isaac Newton too.

When it comes to debating rankings, Alabama head coach Nick Saban is a fuddy-duddy.

So there's no need to waste your time, even if the Crimson Tide leapfrogged SEC rival Florida into the top spot of this week's Associated Press poll. Of course, Alabama is also ranked second behind the Gators in the initial installment of the weekly BCS poll that will determine national title invites by early December.

Saban doesn't mean to be a killjoy -- or does he? -- but his game-at-a-time mantra is focused on Saturday's showdown against visiting Tennessee.

Alabama opened as a 16.5 point favorite over Tennessee. So I did what any self-respecting Tennessee fan would do when faced with this obstacle: I wagered my beard that Tennessee will cover that spread with Memphis radio host Chris Vernon, the man behind the cult classic video, Colonel Reb Is Crying. Given that I've been rocking the beard since 2002, I'm very confident in my bet, almost as confident that this will be a single-digit game that isn't decided until the fourth quarter. I'll explain why as I break down the game, but know this, right now Alabama fans are rolling their eyes and banging on their their talking typewriters -- as computers have yet to reach Alabama -- "Your an idiot," they're about to type in their magic invisible letters -- you know it as e-mail -- to me.

The first BCS standings of the college football season are out, and as everyone expected, they're topped by SEC rivals Florida and Alabama, with Texas coming in third. But there were some surprises after that.

Boise State is the No. 4 team, meaning the Broncos haven't been hurt -- so far -- by their soft schedule. That's the highest opening position for a team from outside the six BCS conferences, and it gives the Broncos a sliver of hope that they could end up in the national championship game.