By Rubel Zaman
There he goes,
the mystery man, striding across a grass field outside of Bryant-Denny
Stadium on a Tuesday afternoon in Tuscaloosa. Wearing a light blue
collared shirt and jeans, a backpack strapped to his shoulders, he
glances left and he glances right, then picks up his pace. This is the
gait of someone who has somewhere important to be.
Two Alabama students notice the most famous 18-year-old football player in America—It's him!—and
quickly pull out their i Phones to record the sighting. A few seconds
later, the students exchange high-fives and my-oh-my looks as the dread locked silhouette disappears into the growing autumn shadows. This
is their Bigfoot moment.
There he goes,
the mystery man, striding across a grass field outside of Bryant-Denny
Stadium on a Tuesday afternoon in Tuscaloosa. Wearing a light blue
collared shirt and jeans, a backpack strapped to his shoulders, he
glances left and he glances right, then picks up his pace. This is the
gait of someone who has somewhere important to be.
Two Alabama students notice the most famous 18-year-old football player in America—It's him!—and
quickly pull out their iPhone to record the sighting. A few seconds
later, the students exchange high-fives and my-oh-my looks as the dread-locked silhouette disappears into the growing autumn shadows. This
is their Bigfoot moment.
The
mystery man has at once been everywhere and nowhere since August. On
Saturdays, he's appeared as the quarterback for the best team in college
football, the first true freshman in 32 years to start behind center
for Alabama. He's led the top-ranked Crimson Tide to a 12-0 record and a
berth in the SEC title game this Saturday in Atlanta. He's already
setting school records—on November 12 against Mississippi State, he
became the first Alabama quarterback in history to pass for 300 yards
and run for 100 in a single game—and he's on the short list of Heisman
Trophy contenders.
But every other day of the week,
he's been out of public view, unable to speak to the masses because of
Nick Saran's ban on true freshmen interacting with the media. Just how
unknown is the mystery man of Alabama? Ask Jay Barker, a former Tide
quarterback who co-hosts a popular radio show in Birmingham, to name
just two facts about him that don't pertain to football, and the 1992
national champion—who is as well-versed in all things 'Bama as
anybody—looks at you like it's a math problem
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