Alabama Football: 2019 season preview week 13 Western Carolina

Between Mississippi State and Auburn Alabama football gets another of those games Nick Saban hates. His preference is for all Power Five schools to stop playing FCS teams.

There is no disrespect intended to the Western Carolina Catamounts. But the only reason the game is on the Alabama football schedule is that Nick Saban can’t get other Power Five coaches to agree with him. Nick wants all Power Five vs. FCS games to end. We might have missed a voice or two but the audible response to Nick’s idea has been silence.

Oh well, not even Nick Saban can control everything.

The Catamounts will come to Tuscaloosa in November for the fifth time. The meetings go back to 2004. They have not been pleasant for the Catamounts. The combined scores of the four games are 201-20. The outcomes could have easily been more one-sided had Nick not hit the brakes hard early in the last two games.

Why do the Catamounts subject themselves to a no-win situation? The game is no-win for the FCS school only in terms of the game’s outcome. The $525K game guarantee is a much-needed boost to the program’s budget. The payouts are important and the losses to FBS powerhouses do nothing to harm the chances of an FCS school to make the Playoffs at the FCS level.

There too, is the David versus Goliath factor. Potentially being a giant-killer is a powerful pull for some fans and FCS players. Some Western Carolina fans actually believe giants can be killed. When the school announced seven more OOC games for 2020 and beyond, one Catamounts fan wrote all the games were winnable. The seven new games included foes Arkansas, Wake Forest AND Oklahoma.

A more realistic Western Carolina fan posted an old Vince Lombardi quote on a Catamounts fans, message board, ” Winning is a habit, unfortunately so is losing.”

The Catamounts do have an explosive quarterback.

The big November question for Adams is whether his O-line can protect him against the Alabama football defense. The Western Carolina offensive line is suspect. Even more suspect is the defense and the special teams. It could be another long afternoon in Tuscaloosa.

On a personal level, walking to Bryant-Denny for the 2007 game, a fully painted purple and gold, Western Carolina bus was spotted parked next to the stadium. The band did not make the trip. The bus looked pretty ragged, almost like an older, non-airconditioned model. One bus should not have the capacity for an entire football team. But there was not another one in sight.

Apparently, the football team back then did make the trip from Cullowhee, N.C. by bus. I hope they get to fly this time.

For those wondering, catamounts are real. They are wildcats, sometimes seen in mountainous North Carolina, including cougars, bobcats and lynx.