War Blogle

Last night, former football players from Auburn and Alabama came together to play a 7-on-7 flag football game to help raise money for the April 27th tornado relief efforts. Given that this was the first time an event like this has been put on, I expected it to be a little unorganized, but it was great. Fox 6 and WJOX did a great job running the show and keeping people informed on who made each play. The fact that they all wore #1 made it pretty tough.

Since the night was more about that it happened instead of what happened, I’ll be brief with my review of the game. Auburn got on the board first with a pass to Adlai Trone (DB, 98-99) across the middle. From there, the scoring went back and forth the rest of the way. I believe there were just two punts, and one turnover on downs. There were quite a few interceptions.

Both halves ended with Auburn driving down and scoring to take the lead with under two minutes left, and in both cases Alabama drove down and scored with under one minute left. On Auburn’s final touchdown, they decided to go for one and were successful, putting them up 41-34. Alabama responded, scoring in just three plays, and was successful on their two point conversion, giving them the 42-41 lead. The Alabama win was sealed when Brandon Cox threw an interception with 30 seconds left in the game.

Here’s a litte bit of footage from the night. It’s not too long, and there are only a few plays. My camera battery needs replacing and I wanted to keep my phone battery strong to keep up the tweets that many of you admittedly enjoyed.

Although the purpose of the game was to unite the two sides for one cause, you could easily tell that the rivalry and competition was engrained in each player. They were flying around, diving after balls, and even getting on the refs when Andrew Zow ignored the rules two or three times and scrambled outside the pocket (especially on the game winning 2-point conversion). But I’m not bitter…charity, ‘Blogler, charity.

All in all, it was a great night. The weather was perfect, the mood was jovial, and the competition was fierce. It was great to see these “old guys” getting to relive their glory days, but as my photographer for the night, Step-father-in-law ‘Blogle, pointed out, these guys might have had their better days behind them, but they were still very fast. Faster than I’ve ever been. It’s true. SEC speed never dies, I guess.

The word is that they are going to do this game every year. Hopefully, it will just become a tradition, and not just something they do after a natural disaster. For those that didn’t go, be sure to go next year. It was a great time.