Whatever...!: Alabama

Showing posts with label Alabama. Show all posts

Friday, June 8, 2012

OUDaily.com | OU softball: Sooners make no excuses for national championship loss

You can blame the Oklahoma softball team’s national title loss on the 12-minute rain delay that happened in the fourth inning, when the Sooners were ahead 3-1, citing the teams should have never been played due to weather conditions. You can blame the defeat on four wild pitches and passed balls that let Alabama runners trot around the base paths into scoring position.

But making excuses has never been a part of coach Patty Gasso or her Sooners’ game plans this season, and they weren’t going to deviate from that plan following the 5-4 loss to Alabama in the 2012 national championship game.

“It just wasn’t our time,” Gasso said... Read full story: OUDaily.com | OU softball: Sooners make no excuses for national championship loss

We've got a soft spot for Alabama's softball national champions | al.com

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - He didn't say hello. He didn't even say good morning. Not right away.

It was half past daybreak Thursday morning at Shoal Creek, and the first words out of Mike Thompson's mouth weren't a greeting but a question.

Did my girls win?

There was no need to ask him to be more specific.

The Shoal Creek president is a big Alabama fan, and only one Alabama team was playing for a national chamÂpionship late Wednesday night when sleep overtook him.

It was the Alabama team that had done everything but... Read more: We've got a soft spot for Alabama's softball national champions | al.com

Tide fans tune in to softball in record numbers in 2012 | al.com

The Alabama softball team has enjoyed strong crowds at home games for years thanks to the sustained success of Patrick Murphy's program. But this season during the Crimson Tide's run to an eventual national championship, Alabama softball began drawing a whole new audience through television.

The Crimson Tide played 20 games on national or regional television during the 2012 season, an all-time high for the program, and the Tide's rise through the ranks of college softball has coincided with a national rise in interest in the sport in general.

The three games of the Women's College World Series finals, all of which aired on ESPN2, averaged 1.2 million viewers nationally in 2012. Games 1 and 2 of the series saw a 13% increase in viewers over last year's WCWS. Read more: Tide fans tune in to softball in record numbers in 2012 | al.com

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Let It Rain: Alabama Wins National Championship

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Jackie Traina threw a five-hitter and delivered a key RBI single, and Alabama became the first Southeastern Conference team to win a NCAA softball title, beating Oklahoma 5-4 in the final game of a best-of-three series that ended early Thursday. Traina gave up three home runs -- two to Lauren Chamberlain, including one in the seventh inning -- but fanned her Oklahoma counterpart, Keilani Ricketts, to end the game. Read more: Let It Rain: Alabama Wins National Championship > SEC > NEWS

Alabama Crimson Tide Softball - 2012 National Champions

Alabama softball team wins its first national championship | al.com

Just when it looked as if it was going to rain on the Alabama softball team's parade, the Crimson Tide rallied and won its first national championship.

Alabama spotted Oklahoma a 3-0 lead, then scored four runs in a fourth inning that was delayed briefly by rain. The Crimson Tide went on to win Game 3 of the Women's College World Series' best-of-three championship series 5-4 Wednesday night in Oklahoma City.

The national championship is Alabama's fourth during the 2011-12 academic year, tying a Southeastern Conference record set by Arkansas in 1994 and tied by Georgia in 1999. Alabama never previously had won more than one national championship before the gymnastics team and women's golf team won titles to go with the crown the football team won in January.

Alabama is the first SEC team to win the national championship in softball.

The start of the game was delayed nearly three hours by rain... Read more: Alabama softball team wins its first national championship | al.com

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Alabama advances to 1st-ever Women's College World Series finals with win over California | al.com

For the first time in its eight Women's College World Series appearances, Alabama is in the finals.

The Crimson Tide eliminated the eight-team tournament's top seed to get there, as it downed California, 5-2, on Sunday at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.

No. 2 Alabama will face No. 4 Oklahoma... Read more: Alabama advances to 1st-ever Women's College World Series finals with win over California | al.com

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Psst, Don't Tell Anyone: Four-term Former Congressman and Obama 2008 Co-Chair Artur Davis Announces That He's a Republican

You might think that the news of an African-American former Congressman switching his publicly declared party loyalty from Democrat to Republican would a national story.
Well, it isn't at the Associated Press, as a search returning no results at the wire service's national site on the full name of former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis (not in quotes) done at about 9 p.m. indicates. Additionally, the link to news about Davis's party switch is currently perched in the "Post Local" section at the Washington Post's web site. If this makes TV anywhere but Fox News, I'll be surprised, even though by any rational definition of "news," this is an objectively big deal. Davis is a former four-term Congressman, was a Barack Obama campaign co-chair in 2008, and was a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus. The last time an African-American congressman or former congressman changed his party from Democrat to Republican was ... well, maybe someone else can come up with a previous example, but I can't. Several paragraphs from the AP's "local" story in the Post follow the jump:

Former Ala. congressman Artur Davis shifts voter registration to Va.; eyes bid as Republican
Former Alabama congressman Artur Davis is shifting his voter registration to Virginia and says that if he seeks public office again, it will be as a Republican.
Davis, who represented Birmingham in Congress for four terms and then unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Alabama governor in 2010, announced his decision on his website.
He wrote that people whose judgment he values have asked him to consider running for Congress in northern Virginia in 2014 or 2016 or for that state’s General Assembly in 2015.
“The short of it is: I don’t know and am nowhere near deciding. If I were to run, it would be as a Republican,” wrote Davis, who moved to Virginia in late 2010 to join a Washington law firm, then left to become a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.
A Harvard-educated lawyer, Davis was a House member two years ago when he tried to become the first black governor elected in Alabama. He started out leading in the polls for the 2010 Democratic primary, but then voted against President Barrack Obama’s federal health care overhaul and decided not to seek the endorsement of black political groups. Former Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks picked up those endorsements and won with 62 percent of the vote.
Artur Davis noted on his website, “I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”
In an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Davis said he was filling out his Virginia voter registration form and planned to have it mailed by the end of the day.
Virginia, like Alabama, does not require voters to register by political party. A voter can choose to cast a Republican ballot or a Democratic ballot in a primary election.
Davis may have thought that either sending an email to or responding to one from the Associated Press might have led to wider coverage. If so, it hasn't exactly worked out that way yet.
An item at the LA Times's Politics Now blog, which if form holds will serve as the paper's excuse not to run the news in its print edition, is headlined "Artur Davis, former prominent Obama backer, leaves Democratic Party," and describes Davis as "one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign." Of course, the AP didn't include that quite pertinent info. The AP also didn't include much of Davis's explanation for the switch. At least the Times did that:

But “wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities,” he said.
“On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again,” he said. “I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country.”
A Google News search on Davis's full name (during the past week, in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates) returns a whopping (/sarcasm) 68 items at 9 p.m. A similar search on Davis's full name and "Associated Press" at Google News returned 24 items, with their origins pretty much proving that the wire service currently considers the story unworthy of national exposure.
Let's see if the number of stories grows to the thousands you'd expect if a former four-term Republican congressman heavily involved in the campaign of George W. Bush or John McCain chose to become a Democrat. Don't bet on it -- but if it happens, it might just be because "somebody" shamed AP and others into giving the story the coverage it deserves at the level of detail it deserves.
Images were cropped from a photo found at this story at the Politico.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.