When ULM stunned Nick Saban and Alabama in 2007: Dude, we need a billboard

With each passing year, the legend grows and the visual becomes more shocking. One wouldn’t blame a younger generation for thinking it was photoshopped.

ULM 21, Alabama 14 — a score 15 years ago Thursday — plastered on a billboard.

“I’m still introduced as the one who was at ULM when they beat Nick Saban and Alabama,” former Louisiana Monroe head coach Charlie Weatherbie said this week.

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Alabama has won six national championships since that game. Even with this year’s Crimson Tide struggles, it’s arguably the greatest stretch of success in the modern history of the sport. ULM has just one winning season and bowl appearance since then.

The 2007 upset has only gotten more stunning with each successive Alabama championship. The loss and the season changed the Alabama program. It was never the same. At the time, Saban compared the loss to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, saying things change after catastrophic events. He later apologized for the comparison. But he wasn’t wrong about what was to come.

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After a 7-6 debut under Saban, the Tide started 12-0 in 2008, won the 2009 national title and never looked back. Alabama went 100 games and nearly 14 years without losing to an unranked team after that ULM game, until Texas A&M ended the record streak last year.

Fifteen years since that day, there isn’t a highlight that stands the test of time. Nothing like Appalachian State blocking the Michigan field goal earlier in that 2007 season. Instead, there are two images that stand out and some pieces of memorabilia that keep the legend alive.

One is that billboard.

Dallas Hixson is a Louisiana Tech alumnus, but his sister and brother-in-law went to ULM, and the family owns several dealerships in the Monroe area. Hixson saw the local celebration of the win, and when the Tide got selected for the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., a few weeks later, he got an idea.

Hixson went to his marketing team to draw up a billboard. He took it to the vinyl company and got three maroon billboards put up on the Interstate 20 and U.S. 165 highways, at the cost of around $10,000. “Tide Rolled!” the signs read, with the score below and the Hixson Ford dealership logo in the corner. He didn’t ask ULM for permission to use the logo. He figured the school wouldn’t mind. The Alabama logo, however, he didn’t use.

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Hixson also made sure each I-20 billboard faced eastward. The reason? So when Alabama personnel and fans drove from Tuscaloosa to Shreveport, they couldn’t help but see it.

“I was like, ‘Dude, we need a billboard and I want more than one,’” Hixson recalled. “We’re going to celebrate ULM and Nick Saban’s going to drive by that sucker. It was that spur of the moment.”

It was a hit. Images of the billboard got picked up by media outlets and message boards. The dealership operator took hundreds of calls, Hixson said. They were all positive comments cheering on the idea. Several local business owners told Hixson they wish they’d have thought of it.

Did Saban actually see it? A story from the Shreveport Times that December noted the Alabama team would make the six-hour drive, rather than take a flight. Hixson said a car dealer he knows in Alabama told him Saban saw the billboard and did not appreciate it.

“I can’t use all the wording he used, but he wasn’t happy,” Hixson said. “Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But it sounds good and it made me laugh. It makes for a good story.”

The Hixson family has since sold that Ford dealership, though they still own others in the area. Once or twice a year, someone will bring up that billboard to him again, most often when Alabama loses. When the Tide lost to Tennessee last month, someone sent him a text with a photo of it. While Hixson jokes that it was about teasing Alabama fans, it was as much about celebrating ULM. He knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime win, and he wanted something for the fans to remember. Fifteen years later, they still do.

“It was an outward symbol of the celebration the community had for the school,” Hixson said. “You may have been an Arkansas fan or an LSU fan in that community, but everybody saw that and went, ‘You know what? Good for them. They had a great win.’”

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“The billboard, those types of things are what the sport is about,” said Darrius Battles, a former ULM cornerback who had a team-high 12 tackles in the game.

A photo of Battles is the other image that stands out from the victory. Battles, his arms extended in the air, with the Bryant-Denny Stadium scoreboard behind him.

It was taken by Paul Letlow, the beat writer for the Monroe News Star. Letlow wasn’t actually supposed to go to the game. The paper had cut back on travel, and this wasn’t expected to be a good game. But Letlow just wanted to see Bryant-Denny Stadium. He figured he’d apologize afterward.

Instead, he had the front-page story and a photo to lead the sports section. Camera phones weren’t much of a thing back then, but Letlow happened to carry a small digital camera with him. He took a photo of the 14-14 scoreboard at halftime, figuring that would be the highlight. Then he got more.

“People thought I staged the photo, but I just happened to be standing there when he looked up to his family,” Letlow said.

Battles is a Mobile, Ala., native. His great-uncle Rich Caster is a former Pro Bowl receiver who caught passes from Joe Namath. His uncle Ainsley played in the NFL as well. Battles would lift his arms into the air after every win as he’d look up at his family. It meant even more after playing in a win against Alabama.

“I just wanted somebody to look up to me like I looked up to them,” Battles said. “Ainsley was in the stands (with the family). I just wanted to know, were you guys pleased with that effort?”

The ULM team got back to Monroe with a big crowd of fans to welcome the team, but Battles wasn’t with them. He went straight home to Mobile with his family. Those were the people he wanted to be with to celebrate this moment. On the drive, Battles thanked his mom for convincing him to go to ULM. Back home, friends came by. Cousins asked why he wasn’t celebrating with the team. But this was all about his family.

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“I tell my kids and the people around me, there are certain things you only do once in life, so enjoy it,” Battles said.

Battles, who now works in information technology in Texas, still has a game ball from the Alabama win. There are a few of them out there. Battles’ ball is faded, missing some letters. He wants to get that fixed. But it sits in a case on his mantel with helmets from high school, ULM and the Arena Football League.

“I look at that thing every day,” Battles said. “It’s a symbol to me. Whatever you believe and whatever you work hard for can be accomplished.”

Another game ball sits behind the bar at Fieldhouse Bar & Grill in Monroe. Joey Trappey, the restaurant owner, is a former ULM team captain. He wasn’t on the team for the Alabama game, but he played from 2001 to ’05 and was a graduate assistant in 2006 under Weatherbie. When Weatherbie was fired as ULM’s coach after the 2009 season, he sold or gave away most of his football stuff. That included various game balls. Trappey wanted the Alabama ball, and he wanted to display it at the restaurant, which had opened that year.

“He knew it’d be preserved and be a good talking piece for some time,” Trappey said.

The ball still sits there, front and center between two TVs. Those who remember the game get a kick out of it. It’s by far the most popular item in the restaurant. Over the years, he’s gotten cash offers for the ball. Trappey said several Auburn fans have offered a few hundred bucks to buy it, the ultimate piece of memorabilia for a rival fan. But he won’t sell it.

“That thing’s worth more than any money could pay for,” said Weatherbie. The 67-year-old didn’t coach again after ULM, and he is now the director of the Southwest Florida Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But everyone remembers the time he beat Saban.

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Hixson didn’t keep the billboard. It stayed up for weeks. He wishes he’d taken it down and donated one to the school and kept one on his wall. That’s his only regret. He jokingly takes credit for Alabama’s success ever since then. So did several people around the ULM program. Maybe it was the spark that changed everything.

No matter all the wins and all the championships, ULM will always have that unlikely win against the Crimson Tide before they became a machine. That image of the billboard, that front page photo, those game balls — they tell the story for those who lived it.

“Nick Saban has done very well for himself, so I don’t think he’s upset about it today,” Hixson said. “I’m going to take credit. I think our billboard was a key contributor in the determination of his career as a football coach.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of Paul Letlow)

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