By Scott Wright

A well-known Gadsden sportswriter -- a veteran newspaperman for whom I have a ton of respect -- wrote a column in the wake of Alabama’s Sept. 22 loss to Georgia that makes no sense to me. In the article, the sportswriter bemoaned the existence of the NCAA’s overtime system for football. His argument was that the 2007 Alabama team has shown a knack for coming from behind late in the fourth quarter to make games close and didn’t deserve to lose after pouring on the coals late in the Georgia game only to come up short in overtime.

With all the respect I can muster, my reply is: Huh?

Alabama should have played complete games against Georgia ... and Arkansas. If they had, neither contest would have been close. Besides, I thought determining a winner was sort of the point of playing the game to begin with. If it takes overtime to reach that conclusion, fine with me. Overtime shouldn't be looked at as another chance to lose, but another chance to win. And winning is a lot more fun than losing. Or tying.

At least the sportswriter admitted in his column that “Georgia dominated most of the game Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.” I’ll say. The Bulldogs outplayed Nick Saban’s team in just about every way possible and deserved a chance to leave Bryant-Denny Stadium with a win just as much as the Tide deserved a chance to leave without a loss.

Would I have taken an Alabama win in overtime? You bet your season tickets I would have. But I’d also have felt like we stole one from a more talented group of guys. (I would have gotten over that really quickly, for what it's worth.) Overtime gave the team that played better for 60 minutes one last chance to prove it was the better team, and Georgia did so on both sides of the ball in overtime. That’s what the extra period is for, far as I’m concerned. Who in their right mind would want to deny two groups of kids who have spent their entire summer learning how to win football games the opportunity to WIN THE GAME? Only one person I can think of.

The sportswriter also mentioned 'Bama’s last tie on the gridiron and implied that the non-win against Tennessee in 1993 was really no big deal. I remember that game pretty well because I was there. The Tide were down by eight points to the Vols but scored a touchdown with no time left to pull within two. Coach Stallings trotted David Palmer onto the field and that little scooter did his thing, taking a direct snap from center and scooting to the pylon and a successful two-point conversion. Final score: 17-17.

Alabama fans whooped and hollered and shouted “Yahoo!”, “Roll Tide!” and “Go to hell, Tennessee!” My buddy Glen and I were in the student section at Legion Field, suddenly beneath an October sky filled with thousands of spiraling, mostly empty plastic cups; tuba players in the Million Dollar Band were kissing Bama Belles on the lips and a couple of the Belles were even kissing back; and DKE’s and GDI’s were hugging and shaking hands and slapping each other on the back -- the very definition of mass hysteria for any student at the Capstone.

Glen and I were jumping up and down and screaming like our team had just won the national championship. In fact, a few months earlier in New Orleans, he and I had acted in much the same fashion after the Tide pounded the Miami Hurricanes into sand in the Superdome. I remembered the jubilant sensation from January 1993 and this felt pretty much the same … for a few seconds, anyway.

Suddenly, amidst that tossing sea of human pandemonium, Glen grabbed my arm, jerked me around and screamed over the roar of the crowd, “What are we hollering for? We didn’t beat those road crew orange-wearing hillbillies!” I yelled back, “Yeah, but at least we didn’t lose!”

As soon as I said it, I nearly threw up.

Maybe it was all the beer I’d had for lunch (and breakfast, and dinner the night before), but I prefer to believe I had grown so accustomed to watching the Crimson Tide win football games that it was the thought of a tie score that sickened me. When I looked back at Glen, he was staring at me like he’d just caught me kissing his sister.

Actually, I had just kissed mine. Everyone in 'Bama Nation had. Gross.

"Kissing your sister" might be good enough for Pat Dye and a sympathetic sportswriter or two, but it wasn’t good enough for the 80,000 folks in the bleachers wearing crimson that Saturday afternoon. Back in Tuscaloosa that night, the Strip was crowded but quiet. Alabama fans were too busy trying to wash the taste of their sister’s tongue out of their mouths to make too much of a racket.

Every last one of the binge drinkers in the Houndstooth that night would have given their Monday morning quarterbacking skills and a half-keg of the Beast for an overtime system on that third Saturday in October. I'm pretty sure every player on the defending national championship team would have liked a chance for a win, too. Anyone -- whether coach, player, or fan -- who has anything to do with a football program that takes pride in winning surely finds no satisfaction in playing an opponent to a tie.

At least, the vast majority of them don't. Win Lyle (there's an ironic name for you), the place kicker who booted the 30-yard field goal that tied Auburn with Syracuse in the final seconds of the 1987 Sugar Bowl, told Rivals.com in 2006 that the 16-16 final score was good enough for the Tigers. "I think our fans and players were good with it. In retrospect, I bet they'd think it was the right decision."

Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll bet "Win" Lyle has never met any of the Auburn football fans I've come to know over the years. The thought of my friend Julie Graves being satisfied with any kind of Auburn tie -- other than a necktie, and she's probably got a closet full of those -- is laugh-out-loud funny.

I'll also wager that there isn’t a single player on the ’07 Alabama football team who would have been satisfied with a tie against Georgia. Those players wanted a chance to win the game and gave it to themselves with a late comeback and this Alabama fan, for one, would rather have a shot at winning than getting stuck with a tie. I'd rather the Tide be better than the Bulldogs than as good as the Bulldogs. Maybe next year in Athens they will be better, but they weren't Sept. 22 in Tuscaloosa.

Because of the loss to Georgia, Alabama players know they'll have to work harder to win next time. Coach Saban has his team headed in the right direction and, hopefully, he’ll soon have Tide players and fans back in that early-1990s mind set, when the thought of anything other than winning football games was downright nauseating. It will be a nice change of pace compared to what we've gotten used to over the past few years.

While he's at it, maybe Coach Saban can also alter the thought patterns of a misguided sportswriter or two before this silliness about ending overtime in college football gets out of hand.