To understand how Alabama (6-0) is ranked fifth in the country, it helps to stop in among the cedars and loblolly pines of North Alabama, at a place where wayward parents drop off their children with no intention of coming back to get them, and where tales of neglect are as plentiful as field larks. That place is the Big Oak Ranch, an orphanage for boys.
Founded by the former Alabama defensive end John Croyle back in 1974, it is a place where horses graze, where a chicken house needs tending and where hogs clamor for slop. It is also where Brodie Croyle, Alabama's senior quarterback, grew up, developed a work ethic and learned some bigger lessons about life that he credits with helping him through five chaotic, sometimes surreal years in Tuscaloosa.
"Growing up there made me anything and everything I am today," Croyle said recently. "The kids who came into the ranch, you could see the hatred in their eyes. And to see them change and become good people and really love life, and realize bad things are going to happen but you can overlook them -- I wouldn't trade that for the world."
Croyle is finally on his way to fulfilling his substantial promise at Alabama, after years of setbacks -- injuries and operations, NCAA sanctions and coaching scandals. To get through it, much less to succeed, Croyle has needed mental toughness bordering on stoicism, as well as a deep attachment to the university. His father, John, who played under Bear Bryant and has rickety knees and pinky fingers frozen at right angles to show for it, recalled an evening years ago when Brodie came home scratched and bleeding from head to toe.
"I asked him, `What happened?'" John Croyle said. "And he said, `I was playing with the big boys and they threw me in the briars.' I asked, `Who was it?' and Brodie said, `It don't matter.'"
perspective
John Croyle added, "Growing up here teaches you to be loyal, to make friends." Along the way, he said, his son saw firsthand the heartache and difficulties of an ethnically diverse group of boys ages 6 to 18 that have helped Brodie keep football in perspective.
"We've had some kids who have done great, and some kids who haven't done great," John Croyle said. "He knows what it's like to carry a best friend's casket."
Brodie Croyle has been exceedingly loyal to Alabama, even if at times it seemed the football program was not returning the favor.
He was recruited by Mike Dubose, who was fired in the middle of a 3-8 season in 2000, less than a year after winning the Southeastern Conference Championship, and after he publicly admitted to having an affair with an athletic department employee. Croyle had privately committed to Florida State at the time, but reconsidered when the Seminoles' offensive coordinator, Mark Richt, left to coach at Georgia.
That gave an opening to Dennis Franchione, who only hours after his first news conference in Tuscaloosa, traveled to the Big Oak Ranch to meet Croyle, even though as a drop-back passer, Croyle seemed an odd fit for Franchione's option-oriented ground game. Franchione assured the Croyles that he would act as a father figure to their son, weighty words to a family that runs an orphanage. Soon after Alabama was sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for recruiting violations, Franchione left for Texas A&M without even notifying his players at Alabama.
RSS