These are strange times.

Yeah, we know. You’ve heard that almost non-stop since March.

These are strange times.

Millions are out of work, unless you were lucky enough to be long in the mask manufacturing or extra-long Q-Tip business. No one knows who is smiling or frowning anymore when we see each other in public — if we see each other in public at all. Restaurants and bars are open, closed, open then closed again. The sports world is trying valiantly to shake itself awake with canned sound and TV-screened images of virtual fans taking the place of crowd roars and normality.

These are strange times.

It is strange in Tuscaloosa, just as it is strange in outposts like College Station, College Park and State College — except for the last 2 hamlets don’t even have what Tuscaloosa has going for it at the moment.

College football is a guarantee to nobody, even if you’re a member of the Southeastern Conference like the fine folks who run the program in Tuscaloosa. The Alabama Crimson Tide are diligently preparing for a 2020 season that is supposed to start with a trip to play Missouri on Sept. 26, finally getting underway a season that will see teams in the SEC, ACC and Pac-12 play this fall while teams in the Big Ten and Pac-12 sitting out due to COVID-19 concerns.

That’s if the season happens at all. University and community leaders are feverishly trying to bind together the public health and public trust with little more than leftover rope from the Franchione Era.

These are strange times.

The unquestioned leader of Alabama football is Nick Saban, and has been now for going on 13 years. Saban has been all around the country coaching football in his life, and has been a part of communities big and small that embraced the sport and its home team as their own. From a mining town in his childhood to the face of his sport in his 70s, Saban knows a couple of things about the meaning of sport and community.

So when Saban was asked about trying to play football during an unprecedented, worldwide pandemic, he didn’t mince words.

“I don’t think we’d have 101,000 people coming to the games if it wasn’t important to them,” Saban said after the Tide’s 1st fall practice. “I think a lot of people have a lot of pride in their institutions, all over the Southeastern Conference and all over the country. I think people love football in the Southeast. I think whether it’s high school football, where that can be the social center of the community.

“I know that sports tied our town together when I was growing up in Monongah, West Virginia. The last guy turned the lights out because everybody went to the game. Everybody went to the football game on Friday night. Everybody went to the basketball games. I mean, they closed the pool room. They closed the (spot) where we used to play pinball and played cards all night. They closed all those places because everybody went to the game.

“So why is that so important to people? They love sports, people identify with competition. A lot of the principles and values that make you a good player in sports, whether it’s pride in performance, personal discipline, your ability to sustain effort and toughness and persevere, overcome adversity. But it’s been a part of our society since back in the Greek days. That’s why it’s important.”

Saban and the Tide are working every day, while wearing masks and gaiters and getting swabbed and temp-checked, hoping that the rest of their city doesn’t sabotage all the work being done to make the 2020 season happen. College football players can’t live in a bubble like their pro compatriots in the NBA, MLB and NHL. And it hasn’t helped that Tuscaloosa gained national notoriety in recent days with pictures of hundreds of college kids on The Strip enjoying the days before classes begin like it was 2019 and the worst to worry about was whether Auburn would figure out a way to voodoo its way to another Iron Bowl win.

Whether a direct result of the public partying or not, positive coronavirus tests spiked into the hundreds — causing the Alabama president and the town’s mayor to close down bars and bars inside of restaurants for 14 days. Shuttering booze joints in a college town is no easy call, and hasn’t come without backlash. But it is the right thing to do if you’re trying to combat community spread in a community that likes its Yellowhammers with a passion.

The SEC is 1 of 3 major conferences trying to play football this fall. The College Football Playoff has also continued to plan for its semifinals and title game, even as the NCAA has canceled all other fall sports championships. In towns like Tuscaloosa and a state like Alabama, where the identity of the flagship college football program lends more to the identity of the citizenry than any other factor, college football is as vital as hospitals and utilities.

Until it isn’t.

“Now, is (playing football in 2020) more important than public safety? No, I don’t think so,” Saban said. “Is there a way we can do that and keep people safe? I think a lot of people are trying to do that. And if we can do that, I think we can play. If we can’t do that, I think somebody will make a decision that maybe we shouldn’t play. But I don’t think that we should not try.

“I really appreciate the fact that we have a lot of people out there working really hard, a’ight? Because this is about the players. This is not about … everybody acts like we want to play for the money. We want to play for the players. I want to play for the players. We have a lot of guys on our team that can create a lot of value for themselves by playing this season, and we can create a lot of value and these guys that work very hard to try to create and accomplish something as a team.

“All those things, to me, are important to the players. I want to play for the players. I know it’s important to the fans. I love our fans. I love the way they support our team. They’re a part of our team. We want them to continue to be a part of our team in whatever way that they can. But this is really about providing an opportunity for the players, if we can do it in a safe way.”

These are strange times.

If Alabama can make it to Sept. 26 without Tuscaloosa and college towns like it imploding the hopes of a 2020 season, it will be a season to remember. And if not, it will be yet another instance in a year to forget.