CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => SEC => Topic started by: ALA2262 on February 05, 2019, 08:47:42 PM
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"The news reached Wimp Sanderson as his basketball team practiced on January 26, 1983.
In the midst of preparing to play No. 1-ranked UCLA in Pauley Pavillion in two days, word came that larger-than-life Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant had died. And for Sanderson and his players, just as for thousands of other Alabama faithful that day, time stood still.
Surely it couldn’t be true. Surely legends like Bryant didn’t die. Surely they just walk off into a beautiful sunset to wait for us on the other side. But it was true. Bryant was gone. Suddenly Tuscaloosa, the state of Alabama and the entire football world was in deep mourning.
Sanderson gathered his players together to break the news. Then his thoughts turned to more practical matters. Would the Crimson Tide still travel to Los Angeles for its matchup with one of college basketball’s most storied programs? Sanderson didn’t know for sure, and he had to find out.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what we needed to do with a national game against the No. 1 team in the country coming up,” Sanderson said. “I got in touch with Paul (Bryant) Jr., and he said, ‘Papa would have wanted you to play.’”
http://hallandarena.com/the-night-bama-shocked-ucla/ (http://hallandarena.com/the-night-bama-shocked-ucla/)
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With a competitor like Bryant, it would have been more than "he'd have wanted you to"... It would have been "he'll haunt your ass if you don't", no?