The Beatless Beat Writer: The Physiology of the Crimson Tide

Joey Blackwell sits down and teaches a lesson on the anatomy and physiology of Alabama athletics and its fans

“It’s so quiet.”

That was the thought that filled my head as I drove around campus on Friday morning. As emails from the University of Alabama fill students’ inboxes pleading them not to return from spring break, the campus remains free of the chatter of students and the life that they bring with them.

If students are the crimson blood that brings life into the campus, then Alabama athletics are the lungs that provide that same blood with oxygen, and therefore, life.

With both the blood and the lungs currently incapacitated, campus is dead.

I don’t mean that in a doomsday, apocalyptic sense. Only temporarily. With all spring sports cancelled, however, there is still one hope that can bring the University of Alabama back from the dead.

Alabama athletics can breathe new life into campus once again.

Now, while I am sitting here on the topic of comparing the human body to the UA campus, it is by pure perfect coincidence that I stumble across this tweet from Big Al on social media:

Listen to the crowd. The eruption. The life. But there is one important sound that happens in the very beginning of the video, as the pulsating crimson LEDs inject atmosphere into Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Did you hear it?

Listen carefully.

Can you hear it now?

That is the sound of a heartbeat.

Alabama athletics and its student-athletes are the lungs of campus, students are the blood, and the stadiums are the heart. They circulate the newly-oxygenated and rejuvenated students throughout their daily lives. They motivate them. Empower them.

This applies not only to the students, though. While the students are the rowdiest section of the stadium, the overall Crimson Tide fanbase is reinvigorated by the stadiums on the campus of UA.

Now, I am not just referring to Bryant-Denny Stadium. I am referring to all of them. Coleman Coliseum. Rhoads Stadium. Sewell-Thomas Stadium. Alabama Soccer Stadium. Alabama Aquatic Center. Roberta Alison Baumgardner Tennis Facility.

These ‘hearts’ beat to the rhythm of its fanbase when filled with blood. So many historic moments and iconic players have entered and performed for its fans on their fields, courts and in their pools.

This is no one-way street, though. While Alabama athletics and their stadiums provide the metaphorical oxygen to invigorate its students and fans, those same students and fans provide the life in the heart and the lungs.

While the campus might remain quiet for the foreseeable future, the hope that Alabama athletics will once again breathe new life into campus is far from gone.

While we all might miss them now, we all know deep down that we will see them again.

A body cannot last long without its heart and lungs, but trust me when I say that before we know it, the Crimson Tide will bring us joy once again.

The Beatless Beat Writer is a series of stories by BamaCentral's own Joey Blackwell. The series is meant to reflect and discuss Alabama athletics and its fans in Tuscaloosa during the current pandemic.