Alabama football: Tide breaks for Christmas & links

F irst a site note, for those online very late (or very early) and found the website down, that was my fault. I was going to do some upgrades and forgot to turn the website back on before I went to bed. Oops. On to the news and notes.

Practice update: the Alabama Crimson Tide football team concluded its pre-Christmas work Wednesday and is off for the Christmas holiday. Details follow.

Tide Wraps up Fifth Practice; Begins Three-Day Break (courtesy of UA)
The Alabama football team wrapped up the first portion of its bowl preparations with a 90-minute practice in full pads Wednesday morning at the Thomas-Drew Practice Facility and will now take a three-day before returning to campus on Sunday, Dec. 27, to continue practice for the upcoming BCS National Championship Game against Texas.

No. 1 Alabama (13-0, 8-0 SEC) and No. 2 Texas (13-0, 8-0 Big 12) will meet in the BCS National Championship Game on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. The game will be nationally televised by ABC Sports.

Alabama held five practices this past week stressing the fundamentals. After a three-day holiday break, the Crimson Tide will return to practice on Sunday, Dec. 27, to begin its game plan for the second-ranked Longhorns. Alabama will hold five practices in Tuscaloosa next week, concluding on Thursday, Dec. 31. The team will depart for California on Friday, Jan. 1, 2010, and begin normal game-week preparations on Saturday, Jan. 2, 2010.

On to the links:
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A few thoughts about the team and how it will approach Texas. Here is a transcript (thanks to media relations):
Alabama senior linebacker Eryk Anders, a native of San Antonio, Texas, met with the media earlier this week and here are some of his comments:

On this week’s practices and focusing on the fundamentals:
“This week we really haven’t worked on Texas. We’ve gone back to the basics and fundamentals, getting our blocks and putting the pads on and hitting again.”

On your role in this game against an athletic quarterback like Colt McCoy:
“We will go into it just like we did Florida. Florida has kind of a similar thing at quarterback, a guy that can run and throw the football. We will just try and play the same way we did against Florida.”

On having such a long break between games:
“I think staying focused and doing the little things right. With all this time off you tend to get lazy and lackadaisical and not do the little things and not doing the little things can get you beat.”

On if this year’s practices are more physical than last year’s bowl practice:
“Yes. I feel like Coach Saban doesn’t want the same thing to happen this year that happened last year. He is doing a good job of getting us prepared and making us hit, even though sometime we may not want too. He is doing a good job with that.”