Stormy Forecast Adds Another Twist to Battle for the Bones

By Steve Irvine

October 8 - BIRMINGHAM, AL

UAB football head coach Alex Mortensen said he’s heard nothing to believe there will be any changes to Saturday night’s Battle for the Bones rivalry game at Memphis because of expected stormy weather throughout the Southeast as part of the remnants of Hurricane Isaias.

“We’ve raised the question,” Mortensen said after Wednesday’s practice. “Right now, they anticipate we're going to be OK. We'll see.”

Avoiding wet weather appears to be impossible in Memphis on Saturday. As of Thursday morning, forecasts called for a 90 percent chance of rain showers during the day, 70 percent at night and the possibility of localized flooding. Memphis is part of a Flood Watch advisory that has been issued for some counties in North Mississippi and West Tennessee from Saturday at 1 a.m. to Sunday morning at 7. Winds are expected to be anywhere from 10 to 20 miles an hour after the 6 p.m. kickoff.

Last week, most of the early week forecasts projected a rainy Saturday afternoon at Protective Stadium for UAB’s matchup with nearby Samford. But the rain never showed up during UAB’s 33-14 win. This week, though, it’s considered to be a more serious threat.

Mortensen said they are getting prepared for the wet weather.

“There's a multitude of things I think that you look at when you're dealing with the weather in making sure the players are prepared,” Mortensen said. “You know, are there equipment adjustments that need to be made based on the surface? Have we worked wet ball enough? We try to do some things to make sure we're prepare through both equipment and through dealing with a wet ball. And then there’s other things to think about if you're potentially going to have delays, if lightning is involved and it's not just rain. Do you have a plan for how you're going to handle the lightning situation? Those are some things we talk about. And then the last thing is do you need to make any tactical or schematic adjustments? Are there things in the plan that you would prefer to not do in rain or you would like to do in rain? We really look at all that stuff.”

One of the nuances of preparing to play with a wet football is you can’t simulate the actual rain. Mortensen said they’ve tried to make sure players’ hands, arm, shoulder pads and jerseys are wet to “simulate that you have been rained on.”

In the big picture of preparation, though, that has been just part of getting ready for the rivalry game against a Memphis team that is 4-1 with the lone loss at Boise State.

“You try to prepare the best you can for everything,” said quarterback Ryder Burton. “At the end of the day, if it rains, obviously there's going to be a few challenges that present themselves. But you just got to adjust, right? We'll worry about that on game day when it gets here. We'll worry about that in the game. We're going to put our plan together as if nothing's going on. If something comes along during the game, right, we'll adjust from there. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to play in a dry game, not one that’s whatever category hurricane supposed to be coming through. But if it comes to that, you can only control what we can control.”

Obviously there won’t be anyone on either sideline without some experience of playing in the rain. Some of those experiences might have involved heavier rain and worse conditions than others but inclement weather is part of football. Memphis played in heavy second half rain in last week’s win over Charlotte. Burton said the heaviest rain he’s played in was his first game as a starter in high school. One of Mortensen’s most memorable rainy game moments came as a player at Landmark Christian in Fairburn, Ga.

“I almost don't want to say the name of the school but they didn't have very good pass defense,” Mortensen said. “I knew I was probably going to throw for 400 yards. And it was a monsoon. It's the only football game I've ever been around or involved with where the game actually got canceled, not because of lightning but rain because the field got underwater. They called it halfway through the third quarter and we were dominating the game. I remember, we threw it a little bit and threw it effectively. But we ran it more than we threw it. And I was kind of thinking, ‘Man, that's a bummer because we were going to kill these guys throwing the ball today.’”