Landon Collins doesn’t just want another win, but the last word with LSU fans
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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — This is the game that Landon Collins wants.
The dramatic 2012 victory at Tiger Stadium was nice, but at the time he was just a freshman at the University of Alabama and had yet to earn a starting job. Now the safety is the defensive leader of the Crimson Tide, who on Monday was named a semifinalist for the Bednarik Award for the nation’s best defensive player.
To say the Louisiana product is excited about going back Saturday would be a huge understatement.
“Just want to show them I picked the right team, definitely, that we’re the dominant force, that we’re the best team in the SEC,” Collins said Monday. “Show them that basically, I picked the better team.”
The “them” in this case are the hometown fans who have done nothing but heap abuse on Collins and his family since he put on a Crimson Tide hat at the Under Armour All-America game on Jan. 5, 2012.
It was over the objections of his mother, just before Alabama shut out LSU 21-0 in the BCS Championship Game in New Orleans, and was viewed as yet another victory for Nick Saban against his former team.
Yes, Collins still regularly hears about all that. About the only way he can respond is on the football field, so this game hasn’t just been years in the making but is personal.
“Just going back into LSU country to playing in that stadium to hearing that hooting and hollering with their fans and the team, definitely, this is the best game,” said Collins, who was considered a can’t-miss recruit out of Dutchtown, La., just 20 miles south of Baton Rouge.
Of course Collins isn’t the only one on the Crimson Tide with strong Louisiana ties. Nick Saban coached the Tigers from 2000-04, and assistant coaches Kirby Smart, Lance Thompson and Bo Davis were on that staff as well. Running back coach Burton Burns hails from New Orleans and strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran graduated from LSU.
Meanwhile, Alabama has been landing more and more top recruits from the Bayou State, including a trio of prize prospects in the most recent recruiting class: offensive lineman Cam Robinson, safety “Hootie” Jones and wide receiver Cam Sims. All three are from Monroe.
“I already had my mind set by my sophomore year,” Sims said shortly after arriving on the Capstone (Saban doesn’t allow freshmen to talk with reporters except the early enrollees on National Signing Day). “It was (tougher) for Big Cam and Hootie, but it wasn’t hard for me.”
The three went to rival high schools and claim that there was no elaborate plan for them to end up together in college. But the more they discussed the idea …
“Me and Cam talked about coming together, because he had told me that if this is where I was going to come he’d probably end up coming too,” Robinson said. “But Hootie man, Hootie’s unpredictable. You can’t really read him. You never know what you’re going to get with Hootie …
“… but I had a good idea he would end up coming too.”
Alabama also landed defensive lineman O.J. Smith from Bossier City, and Ronnie Clark grew up in Monroe before his family moved to Alabama in 2006. Had he stayed in the Bayou State, where he grew up an LSU fan, things might have been different, but he never lost touch with his old friends.
“It was like I grew up with him also,” said Robinson, Alabama’s starting left tackle who hopes play this week despite sustaining high ankle sprain at Tennessee on Oct. 25.
“We played basketball growing up. That was extremely important getting him too. It’s kind of like a family reunion.”
That seems to be happening more and more. Before them Alabama landed linebacker Tim Williams out of LSU’s back yard and wide receiver Raheem Falkins from New Orleans. Joining Collins in 2012 was linebacker Denzel Devall from Bastrop, located just north of Monroe, and cornerback Bradley Sylve comes from Port Sulphur, south of New Orleans.
Running back Eddie Lacy out of Geismar many have instigated the east-bound Crimson caravan, but it was another Louisiana player who had a direct impact on this year’s group, wide receiver Kenny Bell. He grew up about a 20-minute drive from Monroe and has been friends with Sims for years.
“They’re fired up about it too,” Collins said about Saturday’s game (8 p.m. ET, CBS). “They have so much to say, some of the stuff I can’t say right now … but there’s so much they are fired up about. All of those guys were bashed about coming to Alabama, especially their archrivals, and we’re just ready to show them why we’re on this team.”
Similar to the 2008 rivalry game being about Saban’s first return to Baton Rouge and 2012 sort of Lacy’s “homecoming,” this time attention will focus on Collins. While his best friend on the Tigers, cornerback Dwayne Thomas, is saying he’s the talk of the LSU locker room — “Man, they’re saying all type of stuff, how they’re going to knock you out and stuff like that” – Collins desperately wants to not just get another win, but know that he never lost to LSU.
That would always give him the last word: “I don’t want to hear anything about ‘What happened this year? What happened that year?’ No, I beat y’all all four, five years.”
Christopher Walsh has covered Alabama football since 2004 and is the author of 19 books. In his free time, he writes about college football.
