AD Bill Battle's Handling of Alabama Basketball Is Embarrassing

For the past couple of years, Alabama basketball has been an embarrassment. No, I’m not speaking in terms of the on-court product; I’m solely referring to the inept job of Athletic Director Bill Battle has done with what was once a storied program in the SEC.

If you ask the general public about the University of Alabama athletics, the overwhelming majority would tell you they are aware of who Nick Saban is and the dominance Alabama football has displayed during his tenure as coach. However, those same individuals would probably fail to correctly answer who the current basketball coach is, their record, or even one individual player. For those reasons alone, there’s a huge problem.

Alabama has a winning tradition in several sports, and former athletic director Mal Moore was a part of building some of the greatest teams in Alabama history with several championships between the football team, gymnastics, softball and men’s golf. Basketball, however, has really taken a backseat; fans are beginning to take notice, and they are not pleased to say the least.

Coach Anthony Grant is now in his sixth year as the Tide’s head basketball coach, and he has taken much grief from fans for the perceived lack of development of players, poor offense and a horrendous season last year in which the Tide posted a 13-19 record with zero away wins. This season appeared to be a turnaround year, as the Tide secured non-conference wins away from Coleman Coliseum and even came one-point shy of defeating a highly-ranked Wichita State team.

When Grant took the job at Alabama, he was considered one of the hottest coaches in the country after taking VCU to the NCAA Tournament two out of three years, which included a first-round upset over coach Mike Krzyzewski and the Duke Blue Devils.

The first few years, the program had some excitement. Grant installed his style of play and his lockdown defense kept fans on the edge of their seats despite whatever struggles they had on offense. Add to this the fact they also sold out 16 straight home games in his second season.

Fast forward to now, and unless Kentucky or Auburn are coming to Tuscaloosa, you may find a grand total of 2,500 fans in attendance. Sounds shocking, right? Maybe so, considering the final attendance count may register over 8,000 fans, but the discrepancy is far too much to ignore. The reason for this is football takes precedence over everything. The administration has a ticket deal with the Tide Pride donor program that allows them to obtain points for football should they purchase season tickets for basketball. What this essentially means is a bunch of empty seats of purchased tickets, thus the ballooning of attendance.

Please, don’t get me started on the arena. Coleman Coliseum is almost as embarrassing as the program itself. A few years ago, Moore invested $25 million into Coleman, which was nothing more than a short-term facelift. The atmosphere would cause any big-time coach to turn the other way quickly, as it is beyond me and Alabama fans why the student section is seated so far away from the court — especially when they are the main ones who cheer!

Lastly, whoever is in charge of marketing for the basketball program should be fired. Tuscaloosa seems to be the only city in Alabama that receives any basketball promotion. The other major cities in the state typically have no clue as to what is going on with the program, who the recruits are, heck, they probably wouldn’t know what the record was.

As it stands now, Battle has two years remaining on his contract. While he continues to pretend he cares about all sports in his (obviously typed by someone else) “Battle Plans” the basketball program is folding right before his very eyes.

The truth is, football is the only sport the university cares about. Basketball used to draw second fiddle to football, but now it’s falling, and falling fast. No matter if Grant is gone after this season, the program will still suffer until the administration takes more than two seconds to address the fans’ concerns for a sport many still support.

The time is now for basketball to come back to the forefront for Alabama.

Brandon Williams is an Atlanta Braves writer for www.RantSports.com. You can follow him on Twitter, @BfreshAlum4UA, “Like” him on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google.