Alabama 38 Florida International 3

The Crimson Tide defeated Florida International yesterday at Homecoming in Tuscaloosa. The game started out frustrating, much like the Duke game. After the end of the first quarter, the Golden Panthers were leading the Tide 3-0. The offense never really got on track, but thanks to the defense and special teams, the Tide won going away. Alabama should not have had as much trouble as they did. FIU had not won any games this year. Thanks to suspensions after their infamous fight with Miami during their last game, they were short handed by 18 players.

Saturday October 29th the boys and I traveled to Tuscaloosa for Alabama's homecoming game against Florida International. As usual, we went to bed early the night before and woke up early Saturday morning. I woke up around 4:40. The boys and I cleaned up, got dressed, packed our stuff and left by 6 a.m. We arrived on campus around 7:30 and found a good parking place on the street between Farrah and Little Halls.

David and Joe set up our canopy while Matt and I took care of the rest. We have one of those old canopies with numerous sections of legs and supporting poles and it is a lot of trouble to put together. I really appreciated the good job that David and Joe did on this. One funny side note: we lost one of the leg sections earlier this season so we have been using a stick that we found during the Louisiana Monroe game on September 16 as part of one of the legs. Amazingly enough, the same exact stick was right where we left it 6 weeks earlier, so we used it again to support our humble little canopy. I sure would like to get one of those fancy collapsible Crimson Tide canopies.

Anyway, we played some football and walked over to the Bryant Museum to get some programs. We then enjoyed the homecoming parade. After the parade I grilled and we all ate. We walked around the Quad and over to the Ferguson Center where we watched some of the Auburn - Ole Miss game at the theater. We then watched the band play on the library steps before heading back to our canopy. We hung out there a little while before packing up our
stuff and heading over to the game.

Joe and Matt "got into it" early in the game and at one point later I had to get onto David a tiny bit, but other than that we all enjoyed the game. Toward the end, we left our seats and walked down to the sidelines and watched some of the end of the game from there. It was fun to enjoy the game and the atmosphere from there. It also put us closer to the side of the stadium that we parked near, so we were able to beat most of the traffic getting out of Tuscaloosa. That was important because we drove all the way to Huntsville. We did stop and buy two Little Caesars pizzas in Gardendale. We also stopped at home and did a little unpacking before going on to Huntsville. After travelling 360 miles on Friday and then having such a long day on Saturday, I was ready to crash when we got to Huntsville. But it was a great day!