Florida has the Gator “Chomp.” Oregon has their “O” hand gesture. Miami has the “U,” Texas has “Hook ’em Horns,” and the Red Raiders point finger pistols at the sky. Hand gestures in college sports are just cool. And nowadays they’re trendy, too.
Everyone knows Alabama has a great and rich tradition. They even completed their trophy case last year with Mark Ingram’s Heisman Trophy. Alabama’s got a great fight song, a Million Dollar band, one of the best war cries in football with “Roll Tide Roll!“, and they’re called “the Crimson Tide,” one of the few sports team names that doesn’t end with an “s” and, again, one of the coolest names in sport.
About the only thing Alabama doesn’t have in its portfolio is a symbolic hand gesture. The closest they ever came was the two guys who held up a roll of toilet paper and a box of Tide detergent. But other than that Bama fans just scream and raise up the old number one (something they’ve been able to do a lot). Does Alabama need a symbolic hand gesture? Of course not…but then again, why not? Especially when Mark Ingram has already inadvertently invented one.
Remember Ingram’s first touchdown in the Rose Bowl, when he held up his hands to the camera? He did it to show off his snazzy Nike gloves with the stylized “A,” but it’s possible he also invented Alabama’s symbolic hand gesture.
Notice how his hands and arms form an “A?”
Maybe this was what Nike had in mind when they designed the glove. After all, they posted this picture on their website commentary on Bama’s NC win. One can’t help but notice that with the hands held together like that they form an “A.” And we all know Nike is all about starting trends, especially using teams or players who they think will be exhibiting standards of athletic excellence for years to come.
Alabama doesn’t need a gesture, but it would be cool to see 90k+ fans holding up “the Big A” at Bryant-Denny next year.
Now if we can only think of a nickname for the stadium. Florida has “the Swamp,” LSU has “Death Valley,” Michigan has “the Big House” and OSU has “the Horseshoe.” Would Bama fans turn murderous at the thought of calling their stadium anything but Bryant-Denny?
As I live in Texas among Longhorns, Aggies, Bears and Raiders, I frequently see their hand signals. My son once asked me, “What do Alabama fans have for their ‘sign?'”
My response was, and still is, “We extend our index finger into the air and say, ‘We’re number one.'”
Case closed.