A deep breath can be heard, followed by a long pause.
"I'm retired now and I'm just trying to be out of the line of fire," Dennis Franchione says.
Seconds later, the conversation ends.
It's Oct. 18, 2016. Exactly 5,066 days had passed since the news dropped that Franchione was leaving Alabama for Texas A&M in a stunning move that reverberated well beyond the Capstone.
Time, it seems, would have quieted the fury Franchione sparked when he slipped out of Tuscaloosa on a private plane in December 2002 and never looked back. Those four national championships the Crimson Tide won in the years that followed should have soothed a fan base that was inflamed at the time, smarting from Franchione's cold dis.