You’ll never look at a chain the same way again.

Links in a Crimson Chain Continue to Stretch into the Future

By: Larry Burton

When you look at a chain, you may look at the size of the links and marvel at the strength of the totality of it all. Few ever consider that no one link has more importance than another and that every link has but one job. That job is to keep the chain strong and add another bit strength to join the one before you to lengthen the whole and wrap yourself into the next link that comes.

There are many links in the chain that stretches through the years of Crimson Tide football. The first link is anchored in the bedrock of history that goes back to that first play in 1892. While this Saturday night added another link in that chain that ties the future to the past, it’s a great time to remember and realize that not all links had such glorious of history making moments.

Let me remind you of the class men that wore the Crimson when the severe NCAA penalties came down several years ago. Unlike the ones that jumped ships at other schools, that class stayed and helped hold the team together through terrible adversity. They held each other and our traditions together and proved to be the block that helped bring that program back from seeming oblivion.

Mike Shula came to coach at a time when perhaps even he knew he may not be ready for the big job. Though like any coach, in the end you stand alone in the harsh glare of your win – loss record, he was an important link in helping hold things together, gathering good recruits and then linking with Nick Saban who could and did finish the job that was started by Shula.

These are but two links who held things together through difficult times and just like the example given,the worth and strength of these links are no more or less strong as the links that added national championships or other more noteworthy glory.

Barrett Jones is another great link, unselfishly playing any role the team and its coaches ask of him and doing them all so magnificently. He is that latest link that helps hold the chain of just what it means to be a Crimson Tide player.

But is that highly publicized link any more important than Carson Tinker, a long snapper that played his whole career without ever having made a bad snap or whiffing a block. He was the epitome of a man who toiled in anonymity yet did a perfect job and set the standard for players of his position forever.

Many are the links and strong is the chain. Each has sustained the weight put upon them, each has been forged in fire and each serves to continue to stretch that chain into the future, not a weak link among them.

That is the Crimson chain and may it hold together for another 120 years.