Help Us Determine The Best Alabama Sports Illustrated Cover
If you've ever been in the Mal Moore Athletic Facility, which serves as the home for the University of Football program, the hallway outside of the media room is covered in, well, covers.
Sports Illustrated covers to be exact.
They're larger than life, and not just because these have been blown up and framed. SI covers resonate. They're part of pop culture. You've arrived if you're on one.
Of course, Alabama has graced the cover of Sports Illustrated more than any other college football team.
It even called it the "King of Covers" in 2018.
Sports Illustrated in 2018
Good thing it's a long wall.
So of course we get asked all the time either what's our favorite Alabama SI cover, or which one is the best?
We thought we'd let you decide.
BamaCentral has set up brackets and will host a reader tournament to decide not only which Alabama cover is the best, but a top-25 list as well.
The first matchup will be posted Thursday morning.
Here's how we did it:
• The bracket includes 48 covers featuring the Crimson Tide or a current/former Alabama player or coach. We could have done 64, but most of the season and playoff covers are very similar, so we only included a couple. We also could have done play-in matchups, but it just didn't see worthwhile.
• The covers were separated into four groups: Recent teams, vintage years, NFL and other (basketball, commemorative covers, etc.). The top four in each made up our 16 seeds, which were given a bye into the second round.
• Note: We will not be revealing the seeding until the end so voting would not be influenced.
• The rest of the field was determined using a pod system, with covers put into groups of four based primarily on the subject, and then each went into a different part of the bracket. For example, Hall of Famers were grouped together, as were covers off big regular-season wins.
• Similar to the NCAA basketball tournament, we have four regionals. Three were named after Nick Saban, Bear Bryant and Joe Namath, with the fourth simply called All Things 'Bama.
Voting will be held on Twitter (@BamaCentral) and Facebook (@AlabamaonSI). The voting closes at midnight CT each night and the result added to the original post on BamaCentral.
Mostly, we just hope you have fun with it.
May the best cover win.
