Druid City Online's coverage of Alabama football brings you up close and personal with players and coaches. Read these comments that followed the announcement of new head coach Mike Shula as he held his first official press conference ...

Brodie Croyle (#14 So. QB, 6-2 198 lbs. Rainbow City, AL - Westbrook Christian)

The University of Alabama was forced to hire its third head football coach in four months after the unexpected departures of Dennis Franchione and Mike Price. This time University officials turned their sights back within the Crimson Tide family, giving serous consideration to three candidates ... Sylvester Croom, Richard Williamson and Mike Shula. These comments came during a press conference announcing Alabama's new head coach ...

Comments from sophomore quarterback Brodie Croyle ...

Croyle - We've had some in the past couple years or months or whatever, but we're going to be better people, and better football players because of it. He (Shula) knows what that's like. He went through a coaching change and they went through a couple of rough years. But you know, he's going to get us going in the right direction and we're really excited to get to play for him.

Press Pool - Talk about the opportunity to work with a quarterback ... a former quarterback.

He's knows what it's like to be the quarterback here and he knows what comes with it. he's going to put us in the best situation we can possibly be in, and it's going to fun to get to work for a guy who is kind of like a legacy here.

Do you know what it's like to learn a new system? It seems you've done it before.

Everyone's got their own systems, but all it all, there's a lot of route combinations that have to be together. So it's really just learning new terminology and maybe a new route here or there. But all in all, there will be a difference but it won't be that big. Once you've learned one, I guess you can learn three (grins).

What do you think about him being sort of a young guy? Do you think that will help him related to your guys a little better than some coaches from the past?

Not only that he's younger, but the fact that he played here, and he knows what it's like to be at Alabama and play for Alabama. That's really going to help us out in the long run.

Can you describe the mood of the team. On Saturday, you guys were all so behind Price, and now you've been going through this emotion change. How would you describe how you guys are feeling about having a new guy on board.

We excited. We're really excited about coach Shula coming in here. At the time being, we felt like the Coach Price thing ... he was our coach, and we might have got some criticism here and there. But if it was us in that situation, Coach Price would have stood behind us the same way we stood behind him. But we've moved on and have an excellent young coach in here now and we're looking forward to the opportunity to play for him.

What can you do as a team to smooth the transition?

Get in the film room. We've got a new offense to learn and we've got to get ready to play. They're not going to back it up just because we got a new coach and only have three months to get ready to play. We're on a tight ship, so we have to buckle down and get after it.

How did your semester end up as a student?

As a student? I think I made two A's and two B's or something like that ... I don't know. It didn't end up too bad I don't guess (laughing). I heard that there was some rumor going around that I was failing out of school on (commentator Paul) Finebaum.

What was the team's impression of Mike Shula?

A guy who really wants to be here. This is his dream job. And a guy that really wants to start his own dynasty. He wants to be great. You can just tell by looking at him that it's somebody you want to play for.

Does it help for you personally that he's been in the same shoes your in?

It does. It's going to be fun to play for a guy that, as you said, has been in the same shoes I'm in right now. But I've got a long way to go to try and catch what he did.

What do you think is going to be the biggest change for him ... going from the pros where he can fine people and now he has a bunch of college kids.

You know, everybody's got to make transitions and he'll make it fine. We can get fined just as easy. They can take us out there and run us for three hours. That's the same as about a $10,000 fine.

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Click the name for a transcript ...
Head Coach Mike Shula

Brodie Croyle

Shaun Alexander