It will be another four months before Bryce Young and Will Anderson Jr. sink their cleats into history at Denny Chimes and officially join the ranks of the Alabama football permanent team captains who’ve done the same there. But their feet, figuratively speaking, have been stuck in that wet cement since Dec. 4, when their teammates voted them into that honor, along with safety Jordan Battle. And that cement makes it harder to walk away.
No wonder they couldn’t bring themselves to opt out of the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans against Kansas State on Dec. 31.
Both spoke Monday of the leadership role they hold with a team that hasn’t held exactly held together behind them, as a dozen scholarship players have entered the NCAA transfer portal. Both have lived a captain’s example, and both decided that the obvious business decision of opting out was not the proper overriding consideration. The business of leading was, and the first pre-requisite of leading, and of being a captain, is being present.
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“Everybody says it’s (a business), but when you love the game of football, you also have that competitor part of you,” Anderson said. “And me just being at home with training and sitting down watching the game, I would have been feeling so bad, or not feeling great about myself. That’s just the competitor in me. That’s why I wanted to play this game.”
Added Young: “If you look at all the captains of the past, it’s such a remarkable legacy that people have left.”
And to date, none of opted out of a bowl game, either. The last time Alabama was in the position of playing a non-playoff bowl game, the Citrus Bowl in 2019, all four permanent team captains were on hand: safety Xavier McKinney, linebacker Anfernee Jennings, wide receiver DeVonta Smith and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. McKinney and Jennings combined for 20 tackles in a 35-16 win over Michigan, Smith added a touchdown catch, and even Tagovailoa, who could’ve easily been elsewhere rehabilitating a severe hip injury ahead of the 2020 NFL Draft, was instead on crutches on the sideline.
That’s not to knock two opt-outs from that year who weren’t captains − Terrell Lewis and Trevon Diggs − who made a choice they felt was in their own best interest. But Lewis and Diggs didn’t have a team looking up to them quite the way their captains did. And it was clear on Monday that Young and Anderson both felt the eyes of the locker room on them. Had they chosen to opt out, teammates would’ve understood, but they’d have also taken the field against Kansas State with a leadership void that couldn’t be filled with whoever will eventually emerge as the roster’s new Alpha. Instead, they chose to take the field in what will almost certainly be their last time doing so. Battle, though unavailable for comment Monday, deserves the same credit.
For two years and 27 games, they’ve set a captain’s example so many times, it didn’t need to be set again. Playing in the Sugar Bowl was more about putting a stamp on what that example means to them.
“Just being in the moment,” Anderson added, “being where my feet are.”
Stuck in cement at Denny Chimes, four months early.
Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: How Alabama football captain status impacted bowl opt-out decisions