PASADENA, Calif. - The houndstooth hat is a memory — the Snake, Joe Willie and Bart Starr replaced by guys named Julio, Javier and Mount Cody.

Alabama football, though, is alive and well, thanks to a defense that would have made the Bear smile.

That defense knocked Texas quarterback Colt McCoy out of the BCS title game early Thursday night, then made a big play to save the win late and restore glory to Bear Bryant’s football factory with a 37-21 victory for the Crimson Tide’s first national title since 1992.

The Tide was the unanimous No. 1 in The Associated Press poll.

“We back,” said Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram, the offensive MVP.

Hanging onto a three-point lead and with momentum on the other side, linebacker Eryk Anders preserved the victory, forcing a fumble on his blindside sack of Texas backup quarterback Garrett Gilbert with 3:02 left.

Ingram scored three plays later to give the top-ranked Tide (14-0) breathing room, then Trent Richardson added a late touchdown to make it look like a blowout it really wasn’t.

McCoy, injured on the Texas offense’s fifth play, watched most of it from the sideline with an injured throwing shoulder.“I would have given anything to be out there, because it would have been different,” he said.

It wasn’t, though, and Nick Saban, in just his third year at Tuscaloosa, helped Alabama earn its eighth title since the polls began in the 1930s, and its seventh AP title.

Tide quarterback Greg McElroy took a knee to end the game, popped up to his feet, raised the ball high in one hand and hugged a teammate. The celebration on the floor of the Rose Bowl — not normally the Tide’s territory — was on.

“It feels good going down in history,” Terrence Cody said. “It’s hard to do, but we won.”

It was a tough game dominated by big-play defense.

Marcell Dareus will join Ingram, Cody, receiver Julio Jones, defensive back Javier Arenas and the rest in Crimson Tide lore after knocking McCoy down and out, 4:06 into the game.

“I just heard a thump when I hit him,” Dareus said. “I did lay it down pretty hard. I didn’t try to, but it felt great.”

A bit later, Dareus picked off Gilbert’s shovel pass and returned it 28 yards for a TD and a 24-6 lead late in the second quarter.

But this game was far from over.

“It was like we’d won the game at halftime,” Saban said. “But you can’t accept being average. You’re playing a team in the national championship game that knows how to win.”

The second half turned out to be anything but a laugher with Gilbert in the game — a highly recruited freshman who was Texas’ “quarterback of the future” but had thrown only 26 college passes coming into this game.

He threw two touchdown passes to All-American Jordan Shipley to trim the deficit to 24-21 with 6:15 left, and after an Alabama punt, he had the ball at the 7-yard line, 93 yards away from one of the most improbable comeback stories in the history of the game.

But after an Alabama holding penalty moved the ball to the 17, Gilbert dropped back to pass and got rocked by Anders, a senior who plays in the shadow of Cody and fellow All-American Rolando McClain. The ball went flying and Courtney Upshaw recovered.

Three plays later, Ingram surged into the end zone from the 1 for a 10-point lead. A few minutes later, after Gilbert’s third interception of the night, Richardson scored his second touchdown to make it 37-21.

Ingram finished with 116 yards rushing and two touchdowns, and Richardson had 109 yards and two scores as Alabama beat Texas for the first time in nine meetings between two of college football’s most successful teams. It also was the fourth straight national title for the Southeastern Conference.

Before Ingram brought the first Heisman back to Alabama, the Tide used to point to all its championships and say those were better than winning Heismans (Remember, Auburn?).

Now, Alabama has both.

“I don’t think anybody in the country worked harder than us,” Ingram said. “We played a great game today.”

Dareus finished with one tackle, one interception and one touchdown, but all were game-changers.

Seeking its second national title in five years, second-ranked Texas (13-1) got to the game on the back of McCoy, its All-America quarterback, who often looked like a one-man show in leading the Longhorns to 13 straight wins.

After the injury, McCoy was asking to go back in to finish his last college game. His dad, interviewed on ABC, said the injury wasn’t that bad.

But Texas coach Mack Brown decided to err on the side of caution, and McCoy spent the second half wearing a headset on the sideline, trying to encourage his teammates.

The Longhorns defense, ranked third in the country in yards allowed, kept things close while Gilbert got his feet underneath him.

And, boy, did he.

He led the Longhorns on a five-play, 59-yard drive to make it 24-13, then 60 yards for the second score, and suddenly, the Tide was falling apart, not rolling. The 2-point conversion made it 24-21.

“It’s a hard learning curve but he learned fast,” Brown said. “At one point, I thought he was going to win the ballgame.”

The Tide, however, hung on and Saban became the first coach since the polls began in 1936 to win national titles with two schools. He won the 2003 BCS championship with LSU.

The program was grounded, of course, in the hardscrabble work-ethic brought to Tuscaloosa in the 1960s by The Bear, who roamed the sideline in his houndstooth hat and painted the quintessential portrait of a football coach in those days.

His legacy still permeates almost everything at Alabama. But it was Saban, who took over a program decimated by scandals, bad decisions and NCAA troubles over the past decade, who convinced the Tide faithful they had to let go of the past if they were ever going to enjoy the present.

It took him just three short years, and now ’Bama is back.

“Everybody has made a great team and that’s why this team is good,” Saban said. “It’s not just because of me. I’m proud of the team and proud of the way they played today and I’m really proud of the state of Alabama.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): AMESPHOTOS

EL PASO, Texas– Sitting in high school, math and history lessons never captured Danny Santos’ imagination. The drug-fueled streets of the Texas-Mexico border provided his education, and he was an excellent student.

Santos says he became one of the thousands of American and Mexican teenagers recruited into the dangerous world of drug smuggling.

“I didn’t care. I had no conscience,” Santos said at a boxing gym in El Paso, Texas. “You’re young, and you’re naïve, and you think it’s easy.”

Santos’ journey into the underworld of teenage drug smuggling offers a glimpse into how drug cartels lure teenagers into doing their dirty work.

US. Customs and Border Protection officials in El Paso and San Diego report that in recent months, they’ve seen a rise in the number of juvenile drug smugglers getting busted at border checkpoints.

They’re often called mules. These teenagers are usually hired only to smuggle drug loads across the border. It’s a short drive or walk that offers quick cash

but can carry serious consequences.

Drug cartels “just need someone who can le

gitimately cross the border,” said Bill Molaski, the El Paso Port Director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

As an American, Santos could freely cross the El Paso-Juarez border and not raise suspicion. At age 15, Santos says, he met “a guy” at a party who introduced him to drug kingpins in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

“You start off as a driver,” Santos said. “People feel like they can trust you, then you move up to something bigger.”

Two weeks later, he got a $4,000 job offer to drive his first load of marijuana across a bridge into El Paso. It was the beginning of a four-year smuggling career.

“I can’t say I wasn’t nervous,” Santos said. “You kind of project yourself into another time of happiness or joy. … You just have to forget you have something illegal in the car.”

In all, Santos says, he earned $50,000 making about 20 mule runs, driving right through heavily guarded border checkpoints.

Santos, who is now 21, says he was arrested once but spent only a few days in jail. He said charges were dropped. Because he was younger than 18 when he was arrested, and juvenile cases are sealed, CNN could not confirm his story through court records.

Young smugglers don’t fit a stereotype. Several sources said that both American and Mexican teens are lured into the work. Teenage boys and girls alike are involved. Many smugglers come from middle-class families.

“There’s a lot of money in the trade, a lot of inducement for a lot of young people to get involved,” El Paso County Attorney Jose Rodriguez said. His office is responsible for prosecuting juvenile smugglers.

Federal and state authorities say drug cartels recruit young smugglers from schools. Depending on the size of the drug load that’s being smuggled, a kid can be paid a couple hundred dollars up to $5,000.

Mexican officials say cartels have placed classified advertisements in Mexican newspapers with cryptic messages offering young people a job with good salary and benefits. A phone number is included in the ad.

The officials say a cartel member sets up a meeting to determine whether the kid is up to the job.

But Rodriguez offers a chilling reason why teenagers should avoid the lure of easy money.

“We had a kid here who lost a load and had some of his toes chopped off,” Rodriguez said.

Santos says he got out of the smuggling business two years ago. Now he spends every day training at a boxing gym in El Paso.

Boxing and smuggling can both be vicious worlds, but at least boxing is legal. However, it’s a slow climb to the top of the boxing world.

He’s chasing the golden dreams of boxing championships and hoping to make more money boxing than he did smuggling.

Santos is working two part-time jobs, and he says it takes him two months to earn the money that he used to make in one day of drug smuggling. He spent almost all the money he made smuggling. But he has no regrets.

“The peace of mind is good,” Santos said after a bruising workout. “I sleep good, eat good. I feel better now.”

Source (article): www.cnn.com

Source (picture): www.10news.com

TENAHA, Texas (CNN) — Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery.

The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.

But Daniels couldn’t go to the police to report the incident.

The men who stopped him were the police.

Daniels was stopped on U.S. Highway 59 outside Tenaha, near the Louisiana state line. Police said he was driving 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. They hauled him off to jail and threatened him with money-laundering charges — but offered to release him if he signed papers forfeiting his property.

“I actually thought this was a joke,” Daniels told CNN.

But he signed.

“To be honest, I was five, six hundred miles from home,” he said. “I was petrified.”

Now Daniels and other motorists who have been stopped by Tenaha police are part of a lawsuit seeking to end what plaintiff’s lawyer David Guillory calls a systematic fleecing of drivers passing through the town of about 1,000.

“I believe it is a shakedown. I believe it’s a piracy operation,” Guillory said.

George Bowers, Tenaha’s longtime mayor, says his police follow the law. And through her lawyers, Shelby County District Attorney Lynda Russell denied any impropriety.

Texas law allows police to confiscate drug money and other personal property they believe are used in the commission of a crime. If no charges are filed or the person is acquitted, the property has to be returned. But Guillory’s lawsuit states that Tenaha and surrounding Shelby County don’t bother to return much of what they confiscate.

Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson said they agreed to forfeit their property after Russell threatened to have their children taken away.

Like Daniels, the couple says they were carrying a large amount of cash — about $6,000 — to buy a car. When they were stopped in Tenaha in 2007, Boatright said, Russell came to the Tenaha police station to berate her and threaten to separate the family.

“I said, ‘If it’s the money you want, you can take it, if that’s what it takes to keep my children with me and not separate them from us. Take the money,’ ” she said.

The document Henderson signed, which bears Russell’s signature, states that in exchange for forfeiting the cash, “no criminal charges shall be filed … and our children shall not be turned over” to the state’s child protective services agency.

Maryland resident Amanee Busbee said she also was threatened with losing custody of her child after being stopped in Tenaha with her fiancé and his business partner. They were headed to Houston with $50,000 to complete the purchase of a restaurant, she said.

“The police officer would say things to me like, ‘Your son is going to child protective services because you are not saying what we need to hear,’ ” Busbee said.

Guillory, who practices in nearby Nacogdoches, Texas, estimates authorities in Tenaha seized $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and in about 150 cases — virtually all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists — the seizures were improper.

“They are disproportionately going after racial minorities,” he said. “My take on the matter is that the police in Tenaha, Texas, were picking on and preying on people that were least likely to fight back.”

Daniels told CNN that one of the officers who stopped him tried on some of his jewelry in front of him.

“They asked me, ‘What you are doing with this ring on?’ I said I had bought that ring. I paid good money for that ring,” Daniels said. “He took the ring off my finger and put it on his finger and told me how did it look. He put on my jewelry.”

Texas law states that the proceeds of any seizures can be used only for “official purposes” of district attorney offices and “for law-enforcement purposes” by police departments. According to public records obtained by CNN using open-records laws, an account funded by property forfeitures in Russell’s office included $524 for a popcorn machine, $195 for candy for a poultry festival, and $400 for catering.

In addition, Russell donated money to the local chamber of commerce and a youth baseball league. A local Baptist church received two checks totaling $6,000.

And one check for $10,000 went to Barry Washington, a Tenaha police officer whose name has come up in several complaints by stopped motorists. The money was paid for “investigative costs,” the records state.

Washington would not comment for this report but has denied all allegations in his answer to Guillory’s lawsuit.

“This is under litigation. This is a lawsuit,” he told CNN.

Russell refused requests for interviews at her office and at a fundraiser for a volunteer fire department in a nearby town, where she also sang. But in a written statement, her lawyers said she “has denied and continues to deny all substantive allegations set forth.”

Russell “has used and continues to use prosecutorial discretion … and is in compliance with Texas law, the Texas constitution, and the United States Constitution,” the statement said.

Bowers, who has been Tenaha’s mayor for 54 years, is also named in the lawsuit. But he said his employees “will follow the law.”

“We try to hire the very best, best-trained, and we keep them up to date on the training,” he said.

The attention paid to Tenaha has led to an effort by Texas lawmakers to tighten the state’s forfeiture laws. A bill sponsored by state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, would bar authorities from using the kind of waivers Daniels, Henderson and Busbee were told to sign.

“To have law enforcement and the district attorney essentially be crooks, in my judgment, should infuriate and does infuriate everyone,” Whitmire said. His bill has passed the Senate, where he is the longest-serving member, and is currently before the House of Representatives.

Busbee, Boatright and Henderson were able to reclaim their property after hiring lawyers. But Daniels is still out his $8,500.

“To this day, I don’t understand why they took my belongings off me,” he said.

Source (article): CNN

Source (picture): 28CRIME

SOUTHLAKE — From the flowers to the banquet hall, donations poured in to give a North Texas bride the wedding of her dreams.

At Paradise Cove, which is on the shore of Lake Grapevine, family and friends came to celebrate the wedding of nine-year-old Jayla Cooper. The ceremony was put together in less than one week.

“We didn’t expect to do this when she was nine years old, but she has taught us all how to love each other and to be strong,” said Lisa Cooper, Jayla’s mother.

Jayla has battled leukemia for the past two years. It’s a battle that will likely end in a few weeks.

“He is very cute and I love him,” Jayla said of the groom, Jose Griggs.

Jose and Jayla met at Children’s Medical Center and quickly formed a strong bond.

“He knows what’s going on,” said Charla Griggs, Jose’s mother. “He understands that she is going to a better place.”

The young boy’s parents said Jayla helped their son with his own battle with illness.

“He’s brighter, happier and more content with all that they go through in the hospital,” said Lawrence Griggs, Jose’s father. “She changed that, brought it all out [and] opened up a side of him I hadn’t seen.”

The symbolic wedding was a celebration of life and friendship.

“I can’t explain how I feel right now,” Cooper said. “I’m happy, but at the at same time I am sad because I know my child is going to go to heaven with the Lord.”

Cooper said she is ready to cherish the time she has remaining with her daughter — and has a message for other parents.

“Show your kids that you love them every moment of your life because you never know,” she said.

A fund has been set up in Jayla Cooper’s name at the Grace Community Health Clinic, which can be reached at 817-305-4650 or visit www.gracegrapevine.org.

SOURCE: WFAA.COM

On this day in 1836, in San Antonio, Texas, Colonel William Travis issues a call for help on behalf of the Texan troops defending the Alamo, an old Spanish mission and fortress under attack by the Mexican army.

A native of Alabama, Travis moved to the Mexican state of Texas in 1831. He soon became a leader of the growing movement to overthrow the Mexican government and establish an independent Texan republic. When the Texas revolution began in 1835, Travis became a lieutenant-colonel in the revolutionary army and was given command of troops in the recently captured city of San Antonio de Bexar (now San Antonio). On February 23, 1836, a large Mexican force commanded by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana arrived suddenly in San Antonio. Travis and his troops took shelter in the Alamo, where they were soon joined by a volunteer force led by Colonel James Bowie.

Though Santa Ana’s 5,000 troops heavily outnumbered the several hundred Texans, Travis and his men determined not to give up. On February 24, they answered Santa Ana’s call for surrender with a bold shot from the Alamo’s cannon. Furious, the Mexican general ordered his forces to launch a siege. Travis immediately recognized his disadvantage and sent out several messages via couriers asking for reinforcements. Addressing one of the pleas to “The People of Texas and All Americans in the World,” Travis signed off with the now-famous phrase “Victory or Death.”

Only 32 men from the nearby town of Gonzales responded to Travis’ call for help, and beginning at 5:30 a.m. on March 6, Mexican forces stormed the Alamo through a gap in the fort’s outer wall, killing Travis, Bowie and 190 of their men. Despite the loss of the fort, the Texan troops managed to inflict huge losses on their enemy, killing at least 600 of Santa Ana’s men.

The brave defense of the Alamo became a powerful symbol for the Texas revolution, helping the rebels turn the tide in their favor. At the crucial Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 910 Texan soldiers commanded by Sam Houston defeated Santa Ana’s army of 1,250 men, spurred on by cries of “Remember the Alamo!” The next day, after Texan forces captured Santa Ana himself, the general issued orders for all Mexican troops to pull back behind the Rio Grande River. On May 14, 1836, Texas officially became an independent republic.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2009-02-24