TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — On a fall Saturday night in Bryant-Denny Stadium, a statewide religion comes to life in a symphony of crescendos and decrescendos.
It is a football musical, and Alabama fans know the words by heart. There is silence when the Crimson Tide offense snaps the ball. When Alabama's defense takes the field, the decibel levels rise considerably. Noise is controlled through action. Every on-field instance coincides with a collective sound. Against Texas A&M, there were times when your neighbor felt 20 yards away.
And for the most part, over the past six seasons, Nick Saban and his crimson dynasty have played the composer.
But not this Saturday, as the Aggies stunned the top-ranked Crimson Tide, 29-24.
Riding a 13-game winning streak, the defending national champions — and favorites to repeat — were dethroned in the most unlikely of fashions. A conference newcomer and a redshirt freshman boldly marched into Tuscaloosa, shed all expectations within the first 15 minutes and eventually walked away with the most stunning upset of the college football season. No. 15 Texas A&M, with sporadic support from its 12th Man on the outskirts of the stadium's corners, knocked the top-ranked Crimson Tide and, perhaps, the Southeastern Conference as a whole, to the outskirts of the national championship picture.
It was an excruciating way to drop the crystal ball, too.
At home. Crowd at its back. Three yards away from the lead. An opponent celebrating on its own field. If anyone predicted this outcome, their prognostications did not make it east of the Mississippi River.
Perhaps the least surprised person in the building was the winning coach, who addressed the shocking situation with mild amusement.
"As a coach, you always think that you are going to be able to win," said first-year Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin, the new frontrunner for National Coach of the Year honors. "There's a lot of work that goes into that and a lot of emotion . . . it is a big deal."
After the upset was complete and the Aggies (8-2) joined their band near the end zone farthest from the locker rooms, Alabama fans lingered. Some cried. Others struggled with explanations. But, most of all, very few exited the premises immediately. They just stood there, frozen in disbelief.
In silence.
Johnny Manziel had become the composer.
* * *
Just four hours earlier, Tuscaloosa stood expectant, delightful.
Driving in through the throngs of Alabama fans freely crossing University Boulevard and Paul W. Bryant Drive, riding the brakes became an act of self-perseverance. After jolting to a stop to allow a few Aggie fans to reach their destination safely, an Alabama fan walked up to my window.
"You should have hit 'em," he said with a laugh, before reconsidering. "No, they'll want to see this. Roll Tide."
And with a gesture to Bryant-Denny's imposing mass, he was gone, disappearing into the sunglass-hidden masses. Fourteen national championships has such effects on folks, as "champion" infiltrates everyday dialogue around the Alabama campus.
But he was right, of course. Johnny Football isn't one to miss.
Within minutes of game action, it became clear that Manziel — Texas A&M's redshirt freshman sensation who will now likely find himself deeply entrenched in the Heisman race — would not back down from the nation's top-ranked defense. He led the Aggies on a 73-yard opening drive. 7-0. He followed it up with a 41-yard drive. 14-0. By the time Manziel had staged his third-consecutive touchdown drive, a feat no other offense had pulled off against the Crimson Tide in 2012, it was clear the kid was for real.
(Decrescendo.)
"This game, I could see that Johnny had a different emotion about him," Aggies receiver Ryan Swope said. "We knew what was at stake for us, we knew that we had to take over and start making plays."
Manziel finished with 345 total yards and two scores — eight other teams have not posted such numbers against Saban's celebrated defense this season. He's gained 3,794 yards for the season. He's accounted for 33 touchdowns. And, most importantly, his surprising team improved to 8-2 after receiving plenty of trash talk from SEC media and fans alike entering the 2012 season. The Aggies were not expected to be competitive.
Of course, very few knew just how special Manziel would turn out to be. He's Doug Flutie or Fran Tarkenton or any other number of diminutive scrambling playmakers that have captivated the football world before him. Johnny Football has the "it" factor that plenty of athletes are labeled with, but few possess.
"Johnny's always a confident guy, he's always getting the team going," left tackle Luke Joeckel said. "Ever since he came in last year as a true freshman, he walks around with a swagger. ... He's always been a leader ever since he's been here. He showed that today."
"No moment is too big for him," Sumlin added.
And yet, even with the Aggies' 418 yards of hurry-up offense, yet another visiting team almost rode out of Tuscaloosa with head in hands, wondering how one slipped away.
* * *
AJ McCarron exudes resilience.
Even as his team fell behind 20-0 in the first quarter, there was little panic on the Alabama sidelines. There was an eerie calm, but little panic. Excitable strength coach Scott Cochran — the man whose voice is featured in every deafening Bryant-Denny hype video — still bounced up and down incessantly. It seemed a foregone conclusion a comeback would soon follow.
Saban turned to his running game in the second quarter, squeezing T.J. Yeldon and Eddie Lacy touchdowns in before halftime. The defense registered a fourth-down stop. That spelled momentum; it spelled life. Scott Cochran was not the only person jumping up and down after the first 30 minutes had expired. It was a one-score ballgame, 20-14. An Alabama fan in the press box looked to his friend and said, "It's over now. It's over."
(Crescendo.)
Before heading into the locker room — looking as perturbed as expected — Saban said his coaching staff had to find an answer for Manziel: "This guy has a lot of magic to him in terms of what he can do." But he had McCarron on his side, the same quarterback who staged the improbable road comeback against LSU just one week prior.
And for parts of the second half, it looked as though the junior quarterback might just do it again.
He battled Manziel possession for possession, not relenting when Texas A&M took a 29-17 lead with 8:37 remaining. He responded with a 54-yard strike to wideout Amari Cooper to bring Alabama back within a score — it was his second of three passes that went for 50 yards or more in the second half. The third would bring Alabama to the edge of survival once more.
With just more than four minutes remaining, McCarron's strike to receiver Kenny Bell set the defending champs up for a first-and-goal from the 6-yard line. To the 5-yard line. To the three. But on fourth-and-goal, the Aggies held firm. McCarron was intercepted by Deshazor Everett just shy of the end zone.
It was his second interception of the day after not throwing a pick in 292 attempts, the second-longest streak in SEC history.
(Decrescendo.)
"Coming into this year, I think the attitude around our program has changed certainly from the spring to the summer to the first part of the year," Sumlin said. "On Monday, I said earlier that these guys had played well enough to put us in a position to play meaningful football games in November. If you can do that, particularly with the first year in the program and guys start to build confidence, things like this happen."
Texas A&M's defense will be overshadowed in this win's aftermath, but can not be understated. This is the same unit that allowed 57 points to Louisiana Tech just four weeks ago. But on Saturday, the Aggies held Alabama to 7-of-15 on third-down conversions and forced three turnovers. Damontre Moore, perhaps the nation's most consistently productive defensive end, pressured McCarron constantly. If Manziel's individual ability created the lead for Texas A&M, his defense certainly preserved it.
"This is one of those meaningful experiences where you reflect back on your college career, you say, 'We did something great,'" Moore said. "This will show us in the future, when we sit here saying something's hard or something's impossible, nothing's impossible. You can do anything you put your mind to."
And in the midst of pulling off the improbable, the Aggies could have caused a conference-wide loss.
* * *
Alabama's visitor's locker room is titled "The Fail Room."
The title sits in big block letters above the room's door for the public to see. For most opponents, this is considered foreshadowing. Most who enter Bryant-Denny do not make it out in one piece, much less with a win. The bad news for the SEC: It does not appear the conference's national title hopes left Tuscaloosa in one piece this time.
With Alabama stumbling Saturday night, every SEC team now has at least one loss this season, which would not be such a problem if there weren't still three bowl-eligible undefeated teams — Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame — remaining, each with an opportunity to finish the season unscathed. Could a one-loss SEC team jump a Kansas State or Oregon on the strength of its conference title game? What about that streak of six straight national titles for commissioner Mike Slive's league? That's all up in the air now following Texas A&M's stunner.
Not that the Aggies were feeling apologetic.
No, they were too busy swaying from side to side as their band played. They were too busy posing for team photos in the locker room with university president R. Bowen Loftin. They were too busy soaking it all in: Respect, vindication, noise.
"We're just trying to win a game; we're just trying to win our games," Sumlin said.
In "The Fail Room" Saturday night, hip-hop blared through the walls and into the team's press conference area. A speaker's bass shook the room's drink machine. As Bryant-Denny stood quiet, the most deafening sound came from an outsider's headquarters. Texas A&M, behind a redshirt freshman that can create magic on a football field, keeps rising, gradually, a crescendo.
As Sumlin stepped to the podium, he looked cool and collected. A smirk was on his face.
"It's loud in there."
