NIU

[IHateUT]

Wish I could be there for that...I've actually got a graduate class that night from 6-9..yuck!! Were you there on Saturday night for the Belton Rivers show vs. Northwestern St...great game! I got my degree in Elementary Education...

Also, I don't suppose there is Tennessee Tech board is there? We need to get one started if not

I was there. I tell ya, you love Rivers one minute and hate him the next. There are a couple of places that I read/post. One is the OVC board on ESPN. Neither are very busy. The other is newer.

Here is the link: http://ovcathletics.proboards78.com/index.cgi

 

[alextupelo]

Strange as it may be the NIU game was my first ever Alabama game. It was the overall experience that i fell in love with the university and the football experience. It was because of that game that i decided to attend the University. Weird huh.

 

[CrimsonProf]

I agree with that. We were unfortunate to catch NIU when they were having a great season and we were under some unfortunate circumstances. The MAC had some giant killers in '03. Bowling Green (11-3) beat Big 10 Pudue and Northwestern. MAC Champions Miami, Ohio beat Colorado St., Central Florida and Bob Petrino's Louisville team in the GMAC that season. Toledo (8-4) defeated Marshall & Pitt. Some may think beating teams like Marshall, Pitt or Purdue is much of an accomplishment but all things considered it really is. I don't think we would have beat any of those three MAC teams in '03.

That was the same year that Big Ben was at Miami Ohio and Charlie Frye was at Toledo. Those two put on a show during the MAC championship. You hate to lose to a mid-major, but NIU had their mojo working, and I agree that the Arkansas loss was a lot worse.

 

[teamplayer]

We were a 10-3 team the year earlier and brought back a large number of starters (to include 3 future NFL OLineman, an future NFL RB, the game was at home and we had only been on probation two years. These factors couple with the fact that the best NIU team should never be good enough to beat the worst UA team mean this was a pretty terrible performance. This game was a serious warning that Shula's tenure would be short and not sweet (the HI and Ark games that same year should have also woke people up).

It did wake a lot of us up, but so many people loved the no spring practice excuse for Shula. Instead of the coaches changing their strategies to match what the kids knew from a previous year in which we won ten games, they started hammering the square peg in the round hole very early on. Oh well, it doesn't matter any more.

 

[CraigD]

Was this loss as bad as the La Tech loss in, what was it, 99?? I remember that vividly. I wasn't able to watch it (b/c we were meeting up with wife's family at a state park halfway between our house and theirs). I was playing with the kids on a playground while listening to the game on the radio. Boy, talk about a mood killer!

John Cangelosi in the corner of the end zone. I'll not forget that guy's name! Why couldn't we get a hand on that ball????

 

[Bama 13-0]

I was at the NIU game. NIU was not loaded with talent, but they played with a lot of heart and dicipline. I was more disappointed in some of our losses in 2000 than with the losses in 2003.

 

[AlabamaSooner]

Kind of hard not to forget that game. I was in my Junior year at OU and bought the game on pay-per-view. Never thought we'd lose that game ahead of time though. Needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper when we all went out to eat later that night.

 

[BigAL413]

I was at the game, never once did I see them prove to have better talent. Does anybody remember the difference in the game?

It was the blocked PAT returned for two points...take away two from them and add 1 for us and the score is 17-17, not 16-19...we would've definitely won in OT

 

[realmc1969]

I think the NIU loss was worst because after the La Tech game our team beat Arkansas the next week then Florida the following week. Also Mr. Turner is now the backup for LT in San Diego and the boy is bad. He could start for pretty much any other team in the NFL.

 

[BamaBobo]

Strange as it may be the NIU game was my first ever Alabama game. It was the overall experience that i fell in love with the university and the football experience. It was because of that game that i decided to attend the University. Weird huh.

Yeah. That is pretty odd. Its cool that you had that experience and attended school here. I just hope we can all go to a few games that we will win and dominate. :BigA:

 

[TommyMac]

I was at the NIU game. NIU was not loaded with talent, but they played with a lot of heart and dicipline. I was more disappointed in some of our losses in 2000 than with the losses in 2003.

Yeah, the Homecoming loss to UCF was particularly galling as I live just a few miles from their campus. We could have won that game without ever throwing a pass, but we never really gave the running game a chance. Their play-by-play guy hosted a local sports-talk radio show here at the time and he made no secret of the fact that the UCF staff was scared to death that we were gonna just pound it down their throats. but we let them off the hook. He admitted later that we'd have probably won the game if we'd been more committed to the ground game.

 

[Probius]

I just remember Turner running all over us. It seemed like our defense just wore out late in the game. That's the biggest thing that cost us that game was our poor conditioning.

 

[WPtider]

I didn't mean for my earlier post to take away anything from what NIU accomplished (the Maryland team they beat went on to be like 10-3 w/losses to FSU and Ga Tech) but they lost to a very good Bowling Green team and a so so Toledo by 19 as their 2 losses (Toledo was 8-4 w/losses to UNLV, Ball State, Syracuse and BG). The fact remains this was a home game for us and losing to a MAC team is like losing to Kentucky (it should NEVER happen). We've had the discussion about the direction Shula should have taken in 2003 several times with a pretty good split between implementing his own system or running something similar to Fran's until he could have an entire off season to put something in so there's no need to go there but either of the La Tech losses were much worse than this one, along w/the Memphis, UCF and Kentucky loss.

 

[J4Bama]

According to my Tide Pride schedule, we play NORTHERN ILLINOIS again on 11-1-08

 

[NOSty]

That was a good NIU team in '03. NIU went 10-2 and didn't even win their conference. The MAC in general had a Cinderella year in '03.

Isn't Michael Turner in the NFL backing up LT?

 

[sabanball]

To me it's not as much the "loss" as the way the team bounces back from it. Losses to NIU, La Tech, and UCF hurt and we never really seemed to put it behind us and progress forward. The "loss" that I remember stinging so bad at the time was the New Year's Day '91 Fiesta Bowl in which we loss to Louisville 34-7. Alabama's defense looked like a high school team out there against a very hot qb. Having said that, we all know how quickly Alabama bounced back from that debacle.

 

[bamapeppy]

To me it's not as much the "loss" as the way the team bounces back from it. Losses to NIU, La Tech, and UCF hurt and we never really seemed to put it behind us and progress forward. The "loss" that I remember stinging so bad at the time was the New Year's Day '91 Fiesta Bowl in which we loss to Louisville 34-7. Alabama's defense looked like a high school team out there against a very hot qb. Having said that, we all know how quickly Alabama bounced back from that debacle.

Howard Schenellingberger was Louisville's HC and if I remember correctly the QB for Louisville was Browning Nagel one on the top QBs in the nation at that time. Schnellingberger, as a head coach, is undefeated in Bowl games with wins over Nebraska, Va. Tech, Michigan St. and Alabama.

 

[TexasTideFan]

Was this loss as bad as the La Tech loss in, what was it, 99?

Yeah, it was 99 and it was pretty bad. Probably worse than the NIU loss since we had so much firepower on that team,. I thought that game was going to be the end of Dubose, right there. I guess that was a wake-up call because the next week, we beat Arkansas and the week after, knocked off the Gators in the Swamp. Went on to win the SEC that year.

 

[GrayTide]

The worst loss I actually sat through was the USM game in 2000. We lost 21-0 and until then I never saw an Alabama team as unprepared, disheartened and disoriented. Seems like every time USM was running a play we had some late defensive player run on the field not knowing where he was suppose to be. I don't recall exactly but I don't think we ever got inside their 25 yd line the entire game. But the worst thing was as we were leaving the stadium, the players were walking off the field into the tunnel and fans were lined up cussing them, taunting them and even throwing drinks on them. That was the game when Dubose offered his resignation to Mal Moore and Moore wouldn't accept it. A sad day for Alabama football.

 

[BocaLance]

Nothing, for me, can replace the experience of sitting in Bryant-Denny watching the CENTRAL FLORIDA KNIGHTS outphysical our team to the point that our fullback cheap-shot cold-cocked the poor UCF kicker on a kick-off.
Ah yes, good times............