Sep 17, 2024

Warning: Below we have an item that mixes politics and college football. So much potential conflict may be difficult for sensitive readers.

For the rest of us, it's just an inevitable overlap of our favorite pastimes.

Thanks for reading,

Ike

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Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl said that former president Donald Trump is considering attending the Alabama-Georgia game, reports AL.com's Carol Robinson and Howard Koplowitz.

Wahl said he's not involved with the planning, and he's not sure whether the most recent assassination attempt on Trump may affect the decision on whether he'll attend.

The Top 4 matchup between the two SEC schools is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Alabama time on Sept. 28. If Trump does show up for the game, conventional wisdom tells us not expect him to let loose a "Roll Tide," no matter how solidly Trump Republican the state may be. Georgia is a vital swing state in November's election.

Trump attended two Crimson Tide games while he was president. He was in Atlanta for the January 2019 Alabama-Georgia playoff championship game but left before Tua Tagovailoa connected with DeVonta Smith for the game winner. And he was at Bryant-Denny Stadium for LSU-Alabama the next November in a game also remembered for the appearance of the "Baby Trump" balloon hoisted by protestors and subsequently slashed by an Alabama man.

The good news is that the state of Alabama has added nearly 150 pediatricians since 2022.

Unfortunately, that language construction is always followed by bad news.

Nearly all the additional pediatricians, reports AL.com's Savannah Tryens-Fernandes, have set up shop in the larger population centers: the counties of Baldwin, Madison and Jefferson.

Which leads us to the bad news: According to data from the American Board of Pediatrics, over the past two years Blount, Coosa, Cleburne and Barbour counties have lost their pediatricians. There are, at last count, 25 counties in Alabama that do not have a single pediatric practice. All these counties are rural, and many are in the Black Belt.

Incentives for hanging a shingle in a rural Alabama town have shrunk. There are fewer hospitals to share services, and 12 existing rural hospitals have been reported as at risk of closing. Pediatricians say the costs of staying in business have risen a great deal while Alabama's Medicaid coverage hasn't kept pace -- and most rural children are depending on Medicaid.

Across the state there currently are about 700 pediatricians. That would mean just over 1,600 children per pediatrician.

Austal USA has announced more growth at the Mobile shipyard, reports AL.com's Lawrence Specker.

The shipbuilder landed a $450 million contract to work on about three nuclear submarines a year. Austal makes its ships by building large modules that are then moved to an assembly bay and welded together. With the subs, they will build modules, then ship the modules to facilities in Virginia or Connecticut.

This means the building of a new facility and a thousand jobs, according to Austal. And it just broke ground on its Final Assembly 2 launch facility, where it will assemble modules into steel ships. The two projects are expected to take the number of jobs from around 3,100 to more than 5,000.

We have some big career moments for a few high school coaches.

In baseball, Hewitt-Trussville coach Jeff Maulding, Cullman coach Brent Patterson, and former Gardendale and Mortimer Jordan coach Pat Keedy join the late Steve Shartzer of Huntingdon College in the Alabama Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame Class of 2025.

And in volleyball, Saraland coach Dana Mason won her 500th career match last week. Mason worked five years at Citronelle, and this is her ninth season at Saraland.

“Honestly, we had a tough week of practice listening to that jump song. We was ready to just shut that weak---- jump song down.”

Alabama receiver Germie Bernard, following the Tide's win over Wisconsin and its post-third-quarter tradition of playing House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” Bernard later apologized for the remark.

In 1920, Marjorie Holt of Birmingham. She would became the first Republican congresswoman from Maryland.

In 1923, singer-songwriter Hank Williams of Mount Olive. (The area in Butler County, not the community just outside Birmingham.)

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