In 1982, my cousin David “Hoss” Johnson was the last recruit Bear Bryant signed to the University of Alabama. He got his nickname at birth when he arrived on this earthly playing field at a whopping thirteen pounds, played in forty-eight games for Alabama, started in twenty-eight, and made the All-Decade ’80s Team.

For five years, my cousin Kelsey worked for the Tuscaloosa dentist who made the Alabama football team’s mouthguards. At the start of the season, they would make about seventy-five to cover everyone, replacing about twenty weekly. All in all, Kelsey helped protect, conservatively, more than seven hundred sets of teeth for the Crimson Tide.