Written by Pete Thamel at SI.com
A few minutes before halftime at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday, maintenance workers stormed the press box restrooms here like FBI agents. They pounded on the doors with walkie-talkies, asked if anyone was inside and burst in to check on the toilets.
An announcement went over the stadium public address asking fans to refrain from using the restrooms because of a water pressure issue. Soon a crowd of 100,000 found themselves crossing their legs and holding their breaths. For a few minutes late in the second quarter of No. 1 Alabama’s 33–14 victory over No. 6 Texas A&M, nothing was working.
Alabama trailed 14–13 after the first drive of the third quarter, and as the water pressured waned in the bathrooms the real pressure ratcheted up on the field. Those blips of drama may well be the last that Alabama experiences in the regular season. The Crimson Tide quickly restored order by rattling off 20 unanswered points, including their ninth defensive touchdown of the season, to close the game and flush away any memories of their early struggles.
“I was really proud of the way our players, after going down 14-13, played in the second half,” Tide Coach Nick Saban said. “After we got in that position, I thought it was great competitive character on their part to persevere.”
Now 8–0 through the first eight weeks of the season, Alabama has no current top 20 teams remaining on its schedule. A trip to LSU on Nov. 5 and the Iron Bowl loom as the only scary regular season games remaining.
The Crimson Tide showed on Saturday the duality of their reality. They are good enough to go 15–0 and rank as perhaps the best of all of Nick Saban’s national title teams. (This would be his fifth with the Tide, as they’ve won four of the past seven championship). But there’s also just enough hints of vulnerability—a freshman quarterback, a defense susceptible to running quarterbacks, a shaky kicker—that Alabama’s road to the national title can’t be deemed a march toward inevitability. (Safety Eddie Jackson suffering a season-ending leg fracture Saturday certainly isn’t a good omen for the Tide.)
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