It’s been a heavyweight brawl since Bret Bielema took over the reins for the Hogs, and there’s no reason to expect anything different this season
Old-school football. Man-ball. Pro-style. Throwback. Ground-and-pound. No matter which colorful name strikes your particular fancy, it is a style of football long coveted by those among the Crimson Tide fan base. Far from the hurry-up no-huddle machinations of a new breed of coaches and coordinators, the style of football played by Alabama and Arkansas comes from a more brutal, blood-sweat-and-tears era of the game. It is, to extrapolate from the logic of Nick Saban himself, “what we want football to be…” Though nationwide, this gritty, grinding style of football seems to breathing the final dying dinosaur gasps of a life well-lived, there are a few faithful practitioners who continue to pump on the chest of the fading corpse, attempting to resuscitate it and give it new life.