Battle at Bryant-Denny

On Saturday night, as the sun sets in Tuscaloosa, Ala., nearly 102,000 fans will flood into Bryant-Denny Stadium and transform the venue into a Thunderdome. For three-plus hours the sentient stadium will snarl and scream at every passing action. When questioned about this unparalleled atmosphere, CBS broadcaster Gary Danielson gave a fairly succinct answer: “I don’t care about that.”

Danielson, as SEC fans well know, is nothing short of opinionated. During his decade at CBS, he has, at one time or another, been Public Enemy No. 1 for fans of every Southeastern Conference program – facet of the job that Danielson regards with businesslike pragmatism.

That he is unconcerned with cheers, jeers, pom poms and fight songs belies the fact that Danielson possesses a Puritanical enthusiasm for Saturday’s contest. At heart he’s still a quarterback surveying the field, and it shows in the way he approaches games. For him the excitement resides in the intricacies between the hashes, not the hoopla up in the stands. It’s all about the action, not the reaction.

Ever since Nick Saban moved to Tuscaloosa in 2007 and resurrected a downtrodden giant, the Alabama-LSU game has perennially been one of the year’s biggest contests. When Tuesday’s College Football Playoff Committee rankings pegged LSU at No. 2 nationally and Alabama at No. 4, Saturday’s game immediately vaulted to the top of the heap. It is the first de facto playoff game in a series of similar contests that will play out through the rest of the season.

“It has all the ingredients fans like to watch,” says Danielson. “You can’t fool the fans. They know the hatred between the programs. They know the backstory between Nick [Saban] and LSU. It’s an exciting game that’s a lot of fun to watch.”

Much of that fun, Danielson believes, is because the game carries the hue of a different era. It’s not two video game offenses racing to 100 points – “fantasy football,” he calls it, knowing there will undoubtedly be backlash from the Air Raid, shootout, new-skewl apologists. Doubling down, he asserts his belief that a team “cannot finesse its way to a title.”

A hint of romanticism hangs in his voice as he waxes poetically about The Big Chill and the backdrop of a Michigan-Michigan State game throughout the film. “Fans love the huddle,” he maintains. Players circling up prior to every play creates a comfortable familiarity. It adds pacing to television broadcasts and lends a rhythm for viewing.

There’s a hidden nostalgia to the annual slugfest between the Tide and Tigers. It has the feel of an old Big Ten game, not unlike the era during which Danielson played at Purdue. Every yard of every punt matters. Both teams are as close to mirror images as you’ll ever find in sports, amateur or professional. And they each are lorded over by coaches who, though they carry very different personas, are cut from strikingly similar, midwestern cloths – cloths woven by legends such as Bo Schembechler, Don James and Earle Bruce.

As with most college athletics, it’s the head coaches who are the featured performers, not the athletes. In this instance, the buttoned up Nick Saban versus the devil-may-care Les Miles. Which will prevail: traditionalism or gamesmanship?

While the Felix Unger/Oscar Madison narrative plays well across most of the media spectra, there are deeper, more enriching story lines that have hardly been tapped. In fact, Danielson believes that the two coaches – holding five national championships and seven conference titles between themselves – are actually undervalued in certain aspects of their jobs.

Miles drums up his Mad Hatter persona to keep the competition on tilt, but is actually very present in the moment. “Les doesn’t call plays out of his pocket,” Danielson comments, immediately making Miles seem more calculating than folksy. Meanwhile, for all his aplomb as a tactician, Saban’s acumen at needling players is usually overlooked. With his team suffering early-season losses in each of the past two years, Saban has pushed the right buttons to maintain his players’ focus and keep from folding inward.

Both coaches are salesmen. Saban promises to make dreams come true and send players to the pros. Miles wields hedonism as his currency. The NFL will come calling, but there will never be a better time in life than the years spent enrolled at LSU.

In his travels to both teams’ practices, Danielson hears similar repetitive mantras from the head coaches. For Miles it’s the constant refrain of, “Are you tough enough?” Saban’s is more emotive. “Don’t be so sensitive,” he hollers, “I’m just trying to make you a better player.”

It’s this encapsulation of toughness and perfection that Danielson both appreciates and admires. “I could play for both these coaches,” he suggests.

Both teams bring a “no backing down” mentality onto the field. With cautious exuberance, Danielson describes the “hand to hand” and “man to man battles” that make this rivalry so enjoyable. Mythologizing football as gladiatorial combat has become increasingly unpopular as health concerns regarding the game continue to grow. However, anyone who has witnessed the punishment doled out in this yearly affair would be hard-pressed to argue with his assessment. This matchup is brutal, if not beautiful.

In his estimation, Saturday’s game will be decided in the fourth quarter. There will be a clutch play in that final period that puts the victor over. Sharpening focus even more, Danielson believes that the, “most clutch quarterback in the fourth quarter wins [the game].” He cites recent examples of Blake Sims, AJ McCarron and the indelible image of Zach Mettenberger refusing to be helped off the field by his teammates as symbols of the rivalry’s ecstasy and agony.

Saturday night’s game in Tuscaloosa kicks off at 8:00 p.m. ET (7:00 p.m. local time). It’s the second part of a doubleheader for CBS (following the network’s traditional 3:30 p.m. ET telecast), and a rare night broadcast for Danielson and his broadcast partner Verne Lundquist. When pressed about the challenges of working under the lights, Danielson, forever the quarterback, deftly sidesteps the question and passes off in praise of his partner.

“The best part of working with Verne is the contrast. It’s like a second marriage,” he says. “I’m Xs and Os … Verne has the bedside manner.”

The dichotomy between Danielson and Lundquist perfectly frames Saturday’s game. They share a broadcast booth, yet view their jobs through different prisms. Lundquist plays to the emotions of the affair, soaking in the pageantry. Danielson is enraptured by every movement of every player, as well as every alteration of strategy.

And that is the modern iteration of the great Alabama-LSU rivalry in a nutshell: a Platonic tug of war between emotion and reason. It permeates the teams, the coaches, the broadcasters and even the fans – all 101,821 of them.