Alabama Got Pumped For Tonight's BCS Championship Game By Watching Zero Dark Thirty

According to ESPN's Tom Rinaldi, Alabama players and coaches spent last night watching Zero Dark Thirty, the much anticipated film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The movie doesn't come out until Friday, meaning that someone on the Alabama staff got their hands on an advanced copy. We're super jealous.

Anyway, a spy thriller (one that runs 157 minutes to boot) strikes us as an odd choice for a pump-up movie. Something like 300 or Gladiator would be a more logical choice for amping up a bunch of post-adolescents who are about to go violently banging into other post-adolescents in the biggest game of their lives.

But as Rinaldi explains, the coaches wanted their players to take inspiration from a scene at the end of the movie, in which Seal Team Six has to complete its mission even after suffering through a helicopter crash. That scene could provide the players with a good lesson in overcoming adversity, but we're willing to bet that Nick Saban got much more inspiration and enjoyment out of the torture scenes.

[ ESPN]