By GARETH CLARY
Sports Reporter
Friday, July 27, 2008

Fans who turned out for the 13th annual L'Arche Football Preview expecting to get in-depth analysis of the upcoming season received a special bonus Thursday night at the Mitchell Center. The crowd of roughly 700 got to hear Nick Saban, Gene Stallings, Pat Dye, Bobby Bowden, Steve Spurrier, Sylvester Croom, Mack Brown, Dennis Franchione, Bob Stoops, Lou Holtz, Frank Broyles, former President Bill Clinton and - whoa, Nelly - legendary ABC announcer Keith Jackson.

Actually, they got to hear what those personalities sound and look like through the hilarious impersonations of Scott Moore, "The Voices of College Football," who stole the show at the banquet.

Some of his more amusing renditions included the bass-clef mumblings of Stallings, who introduced Bama's new ballyhooed coach Saban.

"First of all I want to say the fun's in the winning," Moore said, nailing Stallings' deep voice and in flections perfectly. "Ain't no question about that. Ain't no fun to go 4-9. Ain't no fun to have a coach on the sidelines that won't go for it on fourth-and-half-an-inch. Ain't good to have incompetence on the offensive staff. Those kind of things just don't win football games. This ain't rocket science. What we're trying to do is just get 11 people lined up in the right place. That's all we're trying to do.

"I'd like to introduce our next coach. His statue looks good next to mine."

Moore changed into a different Alabama cap and went right into his Saban routine, exaggerating his arm movements and hand gestures. He noted that Alabama players Wallace Gilberry, DJ Hall and Keith Brown were in the audience.

"To have good chicken salad, you have to have good chickens," he said, before reminding the players they needed to be in by 11:15 p.m.

Perhaps the crowd favorite was the rambling drawl of former Auburn coach Dye.

"We're talking about championships, about how you get to be No. 1 and winning football games in the Southeastern Conference and being the best and all sorts of things like that," Moore said in Dye's Southern-fried tone. "I've got my philosophy that I'd like to share with you briefly. It's a simple philosophy and it has to do with what I call 'y' words.

"I snuck one in on you when I said, 'philosophy.' My philosophy is real simple. It's vitally important when you want to win a football game on Saturday to have your football team into these 'y' words on a daily basis. The first word is you better have a quarterback who's athletically. Mobility is another important element in football. That's two 'y' words. Dependability is an awful important one too, but you younguns out there tonight and everybody else listening, the most important one is coming up.