Tuscaloosa Bryant Denny Stadium Credit Lewis Kennedy
Il College football in Alabama is an institution, with the sports season starting in August. It’s not just a game: an entire culture has developed around halftime shows and parking lot tailgating, when fans gather to share a beer and a picnic.
This Southern state has a surprisingly rich sports history with a huge number of young people reaching baseball’s major leagues at a time when the state’s population was smaller than that of most cities with major league baseball teams . Among these there is Mobile native Hank Aaron, who hit his 715th home run 50 years ago, breaking Babe Ruth’s record.
Built for the Birmingham Coal Barons in 1910 by Alabama industrialist and team owner AH “Rick” Woodward, the concrete and steel construction of the Rickwood Field has been maintained over time. After the founding of the Birmingham Black Barons in 1921, they also began playing on this field, which it soon became a regular haunt of the Yankees and Babe Ruth. Today the field is still used for amateur and tributary matches, and was also the film set for the films “Soul of the Game” and “42”. Admission is free and guided tours are available (rickwood.com). Nearby, the Negro Southern League Museum details how the league acted as a gateway for many great baseball players to enter the Negro America League and Negro National League from 1920 to 1951 (birminghamnslm.org).
The University of Alabama’s rival football teams, the Crimson Tide, and the Auburn Tigers have won several national football championship titles. You can tour their stadiums – and even catch a game or two – on a trip that begins in Tuscaloosa, home of the Crimson Tide. Bryant-Denny Stadium is one of the oldest in the country, opening in 1929. Nearby is the Paul W Bryant Museum (bryantmuseum.com), which is named after one of Alabama’s head coaches and is full of trophies and sports memorabilia. Other trophies, jerseys, awards and photographs can be found at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in Birmingham, a short drive away ($5 admission; ashof.org). At Auburn University you can visit Jordan-Hare Stadium (auburnstadium.com), where the Magic City Classic is played between the Alabama State University Hornets of Montgomery and the Alabama A&M Bulldogs of Huntsville.
Il Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail dell’Alabama, stretching from the Gulf Coast in the south to the Appalachian Hills in the north, includes 26 courses and 468 holes of championship golf at 11 locations. You can stay and play in eight of these, visiting the most important tourist sites along the way. In Birmingham and Montgomery you can visit civil rights sites, including where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “How Long, Not Long” speech; in Mobile it is possible to visit the museums dedicated to the last transatlantic ship used for the transport of slaves; finally, it is possible to reach the highest musical levels at FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where much of the soundtrack of the Sixties and Seventies was recorded. More information at rtjgolf.com.
It’s the opposite of a lazy river: a huge recirculating system where the channels mimic the rapids of a natural river, but with a conveyor belt that takes guests and their six-person raft to the top. Inaugurated last summer, the Montgomery Whitewater has two routes. The Creek Channel, 670 meters long, is the easiest, with class II-III rapids, while the Competition Channel, about 490 meters long, has class II-IV rapids. Each route lasts 90 minutes, including safety instructions; intersecting with the others in the lower pond. The rapids can also be used by children aged eight and over, but rodeo rafting, in which an instructor accompanies participants on every wave and every hole, is reserved for those over 16 years old. (montgomerywhitewater.com).
For more information, visit alabama.travel.
