Alabama serves alligator in team cafeteria before road trip to play South Florida

Alabama doesn’t play Florida in 2023 — unless the two sides find themselves in an unlikely SEC championship game — but the Crimson Tide are still using a trip to the Sunshine State this weekend to play South Florida to dine on some alligator. And apparently in many forms.

Transfer safety Jaylen Key posted a video of an entire cooked reptile on display for eating in the Alabama football cafeteria on Tuesday evening. Never mind that South Florida are the Bulls — a chance to dine on some SEC rivals mascot is a chance to dine on an SEC rivals mascot.

“Folks got a whole gator in here,” Key wrote on his Instragram story.

Along with the roasted gator, served on the bone, it appears the whole cooked reptile was surrounded by fried gator bites and other such ways to consume it.

It appears there were some choices of dipping sauce, but the exact condiment choices can’t be made out from the photo.

Either way, it looks like a not-so-subtle message has been sent that when it comes to the trip to play in gator country over the weekend, anything short of chewing up and spitting out the competition — or swallowing them whole — won’t be acceptable.

Saban wants to see his team sustain late-game energy after a fourth-quarter collapse vs. Texas

Texas got their revenge from last season’s matchup in this year’s edition of their game versus Alabama, defeating the Crimson Tide 34-24 in their first double-digit home loss since 2003.

The Crimson Tide displayed a mixed bag regarding their execution on Saturday night, some good and some bad on both sides of the ball. But on Monday, head coach Nick Saban was asked if he was pleased with the energy level of his team when they took on the Longhorns.

“I think the energy level was good, I think we started out the game really good,” Saban said. “Did we sustain it for 60 minutes in the game? No. Did we play well in the fourth quarter? No.”

Alabama got off to a strong defensive start to the game, holding Texas to just a field goal in the first quarter. But they failed to reach the end zone in the first half on offense, with just two field goals to their name despite running the ball effectively and playing there physical brand of football.

“But it’s not as much about how you started, we started out I thought really well in the game. Good energy, physical, knocked the ball off of them a couple times, ran the ball effectively in the beginning of the game,” Saban explained.