Crimson Tied

Used to be, back in the days of Rose Bowls and glory under Coach Wallace Wade, that the Alabama football team had the best of everything while the marching band had to scrounge and beg for pennies to buy sheet music. But for the Georgia Tech game in 1922, the band members came up with enough cash from local merchants that they were able to buy train tickets with overnight sleeper accommodations--two bandsmen in each lower bunk and two in each upper. Noting their sudden prosperity, alumnus "Champ" Pickens dubbed them the Million Dollar Band. Alabama didn't have much of a team that year, the press reported, but they had a Million Dollar Band.

A few years earlier, in an Alabama-Auburn game that Auburn was predicted to dominate, the team from Tuscaloosa known as "the thin red line" managed to hold Auburn to a 6-6 tie. Crimson tied! This story, while not exactly apocyphal, is one of many purporting to explain the roots of the nickname.

Whatever. Roll tide, roll.

Today, undefeated Alabama, ranked #1 in the nation, is the underdog going into the SEC-title matchup against Florida, which had a loss early in the season but has since been playing phenomenal football. Fortunately, the Million Dollar Band will be there in Atlanta to raise the roof for the football players. Much like the team, the band is a huge operation involving dozens of staffers, graduate assistants, scholarships, tryouts, summer camps, elaborate uniforms, and buses that make extra stops to pick up the tubas. TV viewers miss their halftime shows when the networks switch to talking-head highlights shows, but a staff of five videographers records each performance. Maybe the bandmembers have to watch the videos on Monday to see what they did wrong. But videos and CDs of half-time shows are popular gift items.

Still, the band is not the football team. For example, the band itinerary for the Atlanta trip this weekend outlines arrangements for dinner Friday night in the Milton High School cafeteria, catered by Slopes Bar-B-Q: "Please make only one sandwich. Please choose either chicken or pork--not both. After everyone has been through the line, you may return for additional food. If you have not yet requested a vegetarian-burger option, don't even ask, it's too late." Somehow, you get the feeling that the football players can have more than one sandwich for dinner.....

So let's hear it for the Million Dollar Band! Yea Alabama, Crimson Tide! Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer!