On a stained cot in Mosul, Iraq, Lawrence Butts sat with his platoon sergeant wearing a tan T-shirt, his U.S. Army physical training (PT) shorts and tennis shoes. At 2:30 a.m. local time, Butts and Bryan Bartels ate pudding nearing its expiration date and slammed Rip It energy drinks to stay awake while their weapons sat within arm’s length. They were parked in front of a 16-inch TV that, according to Butts, they had acquired “somehow.”

That moment was the culmination of an entire offseason’s worth of trash talk between Butts and Bartels. The former was a diehard Alabama fan, and the latter was a diehard Florida State fan. The two teams were set to meet in what was being dubbed “the best opener in college football history” to kick off the 2017 season.

Missing that game — even though they were deployed in Iraq, where the fight for Mosul was going on around them — was not an option.

Fortunately for them, they got an AFN (Armed Forces Network) connection. But when the feed stopped working in the second quarter, Bartels did the Iraq version of going up to the roof and tweaking the satellite feed.

“He ran up to the top of the palace, just ducked his head down, wiggled some stuff around and he came back down and the feed was back up,” Butts said. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, the feed was just a little loose.’ I’m like, ‘I’m glad you knew it was loose. I was about to be depressed.’”

Oh, and one other detail is worth mentioning. By “palace,” Butts was referring to “Saddam Hussein’s palace.”

Saddam Hussein’s palace in Mosul, Iraq.
Credit: Lawrence Butts

That’s where Butts’ platoon had set up shop. The 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army made the deceased Iraq president’s former home their own combat operations post. They took the second and third floor, while the 82nd Airborne Division carved out space on the fourth floor and the Iraqis’ tactical operation center was on the first floor of Hussein’s palace in northeast Mosul (the middle of it had been taken out by an estimated 1,000-pound JDAM airstrike). There, they also had protection from Iraqi soldiers, who were fighting the war on ISIS.

As the squad leader, Butts would often get Saturday nights and Sunday mornings off. That meant he wouldn’t have any patrolling duties during the Alabama-Florida State showdown.

By that point, he was a bit more settled. Butts had been in the surrounding area outside of Mosul since just after Fourth of July of that year. As tensions decreased in Mosul, their platoon made their way to Hussein’s palace. Across the way from them was Mosul’s nicest hotel … which also doubled as an ISIS training ground and a sex slave facility (it can be seen from the top of Hussein’s palace here).

Credit: Lawrence Butts

But as the 2017 opener approached, there was another mission that Butts and Bartels were focused on.

“One day, he’s like, ‘I don’t know how we’re gonna watch this game.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t, either,’” Butts said.

The windowless concrete structure wasn’t exactly the ideal spot to get an internet connection. That meant any normal means of watching the game — Butts streamed games from Reddit while in Iraq — was out of the question. And up until then, nobody in their platoon had been in dire need of watching anything on TV.

Butts had sort of put that dilemma in the hands of his higher-ranking platoon sergeant. Fortunately for them, the plan was in place without Butts even knowing.

“(Bartels) was like, ‘Remember those three days of work it took getting that satellite up to the roof of Saddam Hussein’s palace? That’s how we watch the game,’” Butts said.

Thanks to the satellite, the AFN and, of course, some perimeter protection of Hussein’s palace from Iraqi soldiers, they did just that.

Butts ended up being the one to get the last laugh as Alabama rolled to a 24-7 victory. It made matters worse for his platoon sergeant when Deondre Francois suffered a season-ending injury in the fourth quarter. As a result, FSU’s season went downhill and Bartels’ “by any means necessary” desire to watch the Seminoles faded.

As for Butts, that was a different story. Their unit stayed in Hussein’s palace for another two weeks, during which Alabama took on Fresno State and Colorado State. Butts was completely in the dark for updates on those games, not that they were of the same significance as the opener. After that, they moved out to the wilderness in Western Iraq. It was so remote that none of his 15 SIM cards worked for any kind of service.

“If they did a search of who was Googling ‘Alabama football,’ 100 percent of the searches were coming from my phone in Iraq,” Butts said. 

It wasn’t until after Week 6 that Butts was deployed back to Kuwait (to later return to America), where he had access to WiFi/working SIM cards. Butts was back to watching Alabama games from his cot at 2:30 a.m. local time, but at least he was doing so in his tent and not in Hussein’s palace.

Butts did eventually come back to America on Nov. 1, which was in plenty of time to watch Alabama win a national title. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, where he and Bartels have been able to watch their respective teams with some more conventional surroundings than what they had in Iraq (and snacks better than old pudding).

Credit: Lawrence Butts

Bartels is stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, while Butts has since transitioned out of the active military, which he admittedly joined in the first place after “watching Black Hawk Down one too many times.” He currently works as an office engineer/project engineer for a commercial construction company.

Butts and his wife, a former Texas A&M soccer player, have a little trip planned for next year. They plan on driving an RV the two hours east to College Station to watch Alabama and Texas A&M face off. They’ve already got Oct. 12 circled on their calendars. 

The irony, of course, is that Butts is once again making some big plans to watch Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher face off. This time, though, Butts won’t have to hook a satellite up on the roof of Hussein’s palace in the middle of Iraq in order to watch it.

Not that something like that would hold him back anyway.