CENTRE — It would be just fine with local businessman David Crawford if either Alabama or Auburn wins every college football national title game from here on out.

For the past four seasons, the Bowl Championship Series Coaches' Trophy has come home with a team from the state of Alabama. And all four times, Crawford has organized a team of his own to help football fans celebrate those victories. (Full disclosure: Crawford also publishes The Post.)

Last Monday night, Crawford's crew watched the game together at a local pizzeria. Even though all the fight was gone out of the Irish by halftime, officials from South Carolina-based Knights Apparel waited until late in the game to give Crawford permission to begin printing his allotment of up to 47,000 national title game T-shirts.

“We came down before the game and got everything ready, got all the dryers warmed up,” Crawford said. “Knights Apparel was cautious, though, so it wasn't until 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter that they let us know we could get started.”

The team worked all night and into the next day, Crawford said. By the time the last member of the print team left around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, several thousand of the shirts they had printed were already being worn by Tide fans across the Southeast.

“Within the first day, all the stores had sold 49 percent of their inventory, which is great,” Crawford said. “So then we had to print the biggest reorder we had ever done for them.”

Knights Apparel has an exclusive contract with the NCAA to provide custom-designed clothing for championship events, including the BCS title game. In 2009, officials from Knights first reached out to Crawford during its efforts to get organized for what turned out to be a big win by Alabama over Texas.

“They got in touch through one of my T-shirt suppliers, and asked if we were interested,” Crawford explained. “Then they came and looked at our operation to make sure we could handle really big orders.”

That first year, Model Tees printed shirts faster than the representatives from Knights could count and box them for shipment. The process has since been streamlined.

“The next year, when Auburn won, there was terrible snow, but the process was much better,” Crawford said. “By last year, everything was very smooth, same as this year.”

For last week's game, Crawford and his wife Elizabeth worked with Knights to create a new system that seemed to work out pretty well. Crawford said the extra speed in printing and packaging didn't cause his crew to make any additional mistakes, either.

“They allow 3 percent for misprints, so for us that allowed around 1,400 misprints,” Crawford said. “We only had 19 misprints, total, and most of those were because of shirts that came from the factory with holes in them. It was the fewest misprints they ever had.”

Crawford said seven printers across Alabama got contracts from Knights totaling around 155,000 shirts. The finished merchandise is shipped to Walmart, Kmart, Sears, and Sam's Club locations all over the state, plus eastern Mississippi, western Georgia and southern Tennessee.

“They sent us four designs, thinking that one was going to be their best seller, so we printed more of those than the others combined,” Crawford said.

Crawford said so-called “hot market” orders were picked up by couriers from stores eager to have shirts on their shelves when customers came in the day after the big game.

“We had couriers begin showing up at 2:30 a.m., and about every two hours after that,” Crawford said. “Those guys paid the most for their shirts because they wanted them soonest.”

Crawford said that next year, at least from a business standpoint, he'll be rooting for any of three college football teams to win it all.

“They said they want us to print for them again if either Alabama, Auburn—and I know that's a long shot right now—or Georgia wins,” Crawford said.