Everywhere Dana Dowling looks in her home in Tuscaloosa on Monday night, she will see Alabama football. On her television, of course, because as a huge Alabama fan she will watch as the Crimson Tide plays LSU for the national championship. If she looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor, over at the walls, heck, if she steps into the carport, all of it says, “Alabama football.” Even in her daughter’s bedroom, if she could peel back the drywall to reveal the frame of the house, she’d see someone wrote, “Roll Tide,” there this summer.

This is the house that football built. And if Alabama wins tonight, Dowling’s screaming exultations might be heard all the way down in Louisiana.

What a year Dana and Bob Dowling have had. They lost their home in the April 27 tornado that killed 50 people, left 7,000 unemployed and destroyed thousands of buildings in and around Tuscaloosa. Then they were showered with support in the form of a new house and in new friendships and in hope where once there was despair.

Life, better for the love poured into it, went on. They got a new son-in-law and a new granddaughter and had their biggest and best Christmas in years in which they crammed 13 people into the new house that football built.

And now the men they credit with helping to rebuild their lives are playing in the biggest game of their lives.

So, yeah, they’ll be watching.

The Dowling house is the first of 13 being built in a partnership between Alabama coach Nick Saban’s Nick’s Kids Foundation and Habitat for Humanity Tuscaloosa. The No. 13 represents Alabama’s national championships in football. “We’re hoping that tonight is going to make 14,” says Heather Poe, office manager of the Habitat for Humanity. Habitat expects the number of houses it will build in Tuscaloosa will eventually be in the hundreds.

Win or lose tonight, this Alabama team will go down in Tuscaloosa as one that accomplished far more than any stat sheet or won-loss record shows. The Dowlings’ story is just one of countless examples of the way the football team, led by Saban’s example, reacted with love, charity and hard work in the face of death and devastation.

Dowling affirms all of this except the “or-lose” part. That’s just not within the realm of possibilities. Alabama will win, it’s just a matter of how the team will do it. “There’s more than one team that can win? That confuses me,” she says, with the wry sense of humor that helped sustain her through a summer of dread and fear. Alabama will win, it’s just a matter of by how much. “I know they’re playing another team. But that’s just for TV.”

There is joy and laughter in this house, and it sounds glorious. Under the floor upon which Dowling rests her feet tonight, there is insulation, put there by student volunteers who came from … wait for it … LSU. How incredible is that? Students from the two schools playing for the national championship helped make it possible for Dowling and her family to watch the national championship. None of the LSU kids wrote, “Geaux, Tigers” anywhere. Good thing. Dowling has a sentimental streak a mile wide but it narrows at kickoff. She loves those kids at LSU with the strength of a thousand tears. But …

“It doesn’t change who I want to win. Don’t confuse that. It’s like my Auburn kids,” she says, referring to students from there who worked on her house. “I absolutely, totally love my Auburn kids. That doesn’t mean that I want them to win. They can win when they’re not playing Alabama. I’m fine with that.”

Turning serious, Dowling says this: “As far as the impact overall, no, it doesn’t matter (who wins). As far as after all Nick’s Kids and the university and college students have gone through, and all of the turning around and giving back to the community, it’s almost deserved. They deserve the reward for everything they’ve done.”

Roughly 75 percent of the Alabama football players worked on either the Dowling house or another Habitat house nearby, though few of them had construction skills. Then again, skills don’t matter when you’re as strong as a moose, like D.J. Fluker, a 6-6, 335-pound offensive tackle. From the ground, he threw sheets of plywood onto the roof.

In the months after their home was destroyed, Dana and her teenage daughter, Marilyn, were traumatized by the tornado. That they are alive to tell the story is pure luck. Outside their front door, they could see a red minivan, way up high in the sky. One neighbor’s trailer disintegrated in seconds. Another was taken apart in two pieces. The roof of the Dowling’s trailer lifted just enough for Bob to see out … but then it dropped back down. He likes to say God peeked in and saw them and let them live. Their trailer stayed intact. But when movers tried to relocate it, it collapsed on itself.

Slowly but surely, as their home was built, so were their hearts, and they’ve given back some of what they’ve been given. Dana and Marilyn have volunteered on other Habitat houses in the community. And for Christmas, that big Christmas with all the family in the new house, Marilyn asked for and received tools and a tool belt.

Read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/feed/2011-10/lsualabama/story/house-that-bama-built-gives-life-to-alabama-fans-dowling-family#ixzz1jdXKOPET

http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2011-09-09/football-plays-vital-role-in-tuscaloosas-healing-from-tornado#ixzz1YS4xJTP4

Alabama kicker Cade Foster put the ball on a tee moments before opening the Crimson Tide’s 2011 football season, his teammates hopped up and down on the sideline. They smacked one another’s helmets and cracked one another’s shoulder pads and bounced around like preschoolers who had eaten too many cupcakes.

The moment of silence had long since passed. This was a moment to go bananas. Bryant-Denny Stadium, alive with excitement, was a rolling, rollicking, buzzing, boisterous ocean of red and white. Tuscaloosa goes crazy for every home opener, of course, but this one was different, more anticipated than any opener in recent memory because the city is still struggling to recover from an April tornado that left 50 of the county’s residents dead.

From players to politicians to aid workers to victims, residents of Tuscaloosa looked forward to this game because it meant, at least for a while, they would no longer look back at the tornado. Being a distraction is not the only way football has helped the community heal, but on this day it was the most obvious. For at least a few hours, fans would focus on football, which is to say, they would be normal, have their old lives back. A summer without football is always too long; this one was interminable. Finally, glory of glories, football was here.

But first, Foster had to kick off.

Just as he appeared ready to approach the ball, he stopped.

Wind had blown the ball over.

He ran up to where the ball had fallen, grabbed it and set it right.

A few hundred yards to the north and west of where that ball lay after it fell, Priscilla Nail was working at a souvenir stand. Normal for her had returned at midnight, when she started setting up in advance of the 11:20 a.m. kickoff. That is, if it is normal to be lining up hats and shirts on a table as drunks wander by. When you’ve been through what she has this summer, dealing with frolicking frat boys in the wee hours is pleasant. Nail craves the normalcy that comes with the Crimson Tide crazies.

Among the people killed in Tuscaloosa was one of Nail’s neighbors. Two other neighbors were picked up and thrown around before they landed, battered and bruised, on her front lawn, where she discovered them when she emerged—with her two kids, her parents, her sister and her sister’s two kids—from her basement. Nail’s house was destroyed. So was her parents’ house. She lost her job; the gym at which she worked as a trainer was wiped out in the tornado. She is one of the approximately 7,000 people who became unemployed in the span of six minutes on April 27.

As it did for much of Tuscaloosa, the tornado forced Nail to show perseverance, to pick herself up and start over no matter how hard she had been hit, no matter how much she had lost. She and the rest of Tuscaloosa also have had to put their faith in the idea that things will get better. The hard part is putting that faith into action, living as if life is normal when it’s anything but. Once they grabbed hold of faith, they used it as a shield to beat back fear and uncertainty and outlast the tough times. It hasn’t been easy, and it’s not over. Living arrangements for many lack permanence, and work opportunities seem to come and go. No, life is not normal, not yet, but it’s getting there, slowly returning to routine, and football is a big reason.

Something as simple as hawking a T-shirt brings with it newfound power and meaning. The financial impact of football in Tuscaloosa is massive, and the healing power of commerce, as crass as it might sound, cannot be missed, especially for people like Nail who lost their primary sources of income. A home game brings $12 million to $15 million in revenue into the area, according to the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama. As the home opener and a greatly anticipated game, the Kent State matchup was expected to be on the high end of that.

http://www.rolltide.com/genrel/101911aaa.html

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - University of Notre Dame administrators and student-athletes are visiting Tuscaloosa this week to help aid in tornado relief efforts.

The 24 students and six administrators, who are currently on their university's fall break, elected to travel to Tuscaloosa to participate in a service trip they call "Fight for Tide." They will be working in collaboration with Project Team Up, a redevelopment and re-visioning initiative in partnership with Nick's Kids and Coach Nick and Terry Saban.

Project Team Up's stated goal is to lead the way in the redevelopment of some of Alabama's hardest hit communities in the aftermath of the April 2011 tornadoes.

"After the April 27 tornado, one of our contacts in Alabama called and asked if we would be willing to gather clothes and supplies to send to Tuscaloosa," says Sarah Smith, program coordinator for Notre Dame's student welfare department. "Many student athletes and staff from the athletic department then came up with the idea to travel to Tuscaloosa as another way to help and show our support

The students and faculty will be working this week in the Alberta City area and are responsible for clearing debris so that new residential houses may be built.

The Notre Dame students and faculty are also getting the chance to meet with many UA student athletes and administrators. Athletic Director Mal Moore met with the group and welcomed them to the University's campus this past Sunday.

In addition, head softball coach Patrick Murphy and many members of the softball team had dinner with the group on Monday and showed them around Bryant Denny Stadium and Rhoads Stadium. The softball team will also be volunteering with the Notre Dame students and faculty on Thursday.

"Coach Murphy and the softball team were great and we really enjoyed having the chance to meet Mal Moore," says Smith.

Jill Lancaster, director of UA's athletic life skills and community outreach department, says that the Notre Dame students and faculty will attend dinner on Thursday with the University's Student Athletic Advisory Committee and will have the opportunity to tour of Sewell-Thomas Stadium and the baseball facilities as part of their visit to the campus.

For more information on volunteer opportunities within the Tuscaloosa community, please visit http://www.projectteamup.com/.