Mike Shula, Condi Rice, and my missing Tennessee ticket

According to the Mobile Press-Register, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions heard that UA head football coach Mike Shula had been fired from an unlikely source - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

News of football coach Mike Shula's firing traveled fast and far last week.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, was attending a NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, where he heard it from a high-ranking source -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, a Birmingham native, is known as an avid football fan. In 2005, she hosted British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on a visit to Tuscaloosa, where they attended the Crimson Tide's game against rival Tennessee. Alabama beat the Volunteers 6-3 on a last-minute field goal, one of the biggest wins of Shula's four-year tenure.

Sessions, a graduate of UA's law school, was asked if Rice appeared disappointed by the news that Shula had been fired.

"No comment," he said with a chuckle. "But she was smiling when she said it."

At least Condi got to be at Bryant-Denny for the Tennessee game last year.

I wasn't there.

I ended up watching it on TV here in Huntville - over 150 miles away.

Not that I didn't have a ticket, mind you. I did.

However, the Friday before the game, as I was about to leave town for Tuscaloosa to hear (who else?) Condi Rice speak at the University, I found that I had misplaced it. I don't know exactly what curse words I uttered that morning, or in what order I uttered them, but I do know that my elderly neighbors got quite an earful.

Anyway, after embarking on a frantic search to find my lost ticket, I was ultimately faced with a gut-wrenching choice: either give up the search so as to make Condi's lecture on time, or keep looking in what would most probably be a fruitless effort, given the organizational state of my apartment.

I paused, took a deep breath, looked at the door, and then looked back - contemplating the many crannies and nooks where my ticket could have hidden itself. Deciding on the path of least resistance, I hit the road for Tuscaloosa, sans ticket.

After Ms. Rice's lecture, which was wonderful*, of course, I came back to Huntsville, still intent on finding my ticket so that I could return to Tuscaloosa in time for the game on Saturday. But in spite of my most valiant efforts - assisted by an ad-hoc liturgy of prayers, curses, and an appeal to St. Paul "Bear" Bryant himself - I still couldn't find it, and so I ended up watching what was possibly the best Bama game in a decade - and one of Coach Shula's finest moments - alone on my couch.

(Or maybe I watched it with a few friends at a bar...I don't really remember, but you get the picture.)

As fate would have it, that once-valuable ticket finally turned up about six months later, buried under a stack of crap that should've been thrown away years ago. Not that I'm bitter. At least I got to get my picture made with Condi. (Good luck finding me in the picture, though.)

* Ms. Rice's speech was indeed wonderful, as I said. In it, she recalled her childhood in Birmingham, and how, when she lived there, it had become known in some quarters as "Bombingham." Thanks to the many triumphs of the civil rights movement, our largest city has been relieved of that awful nickname, so that today, we find that hard feelings have been replaced by pride in the fact that the struggle for civil rights had its beginnings and its greatest moral victories right here in Alabama. Great battles for freedom were won in cities like Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Anniston, and we should never forget it. The fact that Condoleezza Rice now sits in the Secretary of State's office is one of the greatest testaments of all to that joyous fact.

While I'm at it, I should also mention that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who accompanied Rice on her trip to Alabama, also gave a very entertaining and moving speech - a difficult task for a Labourite - although Straw, like Prime Minister Tony Blair, seems to be of the non-pinko variety.

At the end of the program, Coach Mike Shula presented both Rice and Straw with autographed footballs. A nice, diplomatic gesture, I thought. Speaking of which, I hear President Bush is looking for a new U.N. ambassador. Maybe Coach Shula should apply.