Oklahoma is going to have its hands full on Saturday night. 

The Sooners will welcome Alabama to Norman for just the second time ever, and it’s only the seventh all-time meeting between the two college football powers. 

The No. 7-ranked Crimson Tide (8-2, 4-2 SEC) are looking to continue their march toward the College Football Playoff while OU (5-5, 1-5) is just trying to honor its seniors in the home finale by getting bowl eligible. 

Kalen DeBoer has kept Alabama’s offense firing as one of the nation’s best, presenting a tough test for the Sooners. 

The Crimson Tide offense can hurt defenses in a hurry. 

Quarterback Jalen Milroe has forged a lethal connection with freshman wide receiver Ryan Williams, and he can also do damage with his legs. 

Slowing down Alabama play-after-play is hard enough, but make one mistake and DeBoer’s offense can make defenses pay. 

The Crimson Tide have scored 53 touchdowns on offense this year, and 23 of those have from from 20-plus yards out. 

It’s not just been ‘Bama beating defenses over the top, either. Of the 23 chunk plays that have scored, 12 have been passes and 11 runs. 

OU’s rushing defense has held up Ewell this year, as the Sooners rank 18th in the country in rushing yards allowed per game, but the Sooners have struggled with letting receivers hurt them deep in SEC-play this year, which will be a concern come Saturday. 

Nick Saban may be gone, but Alabama’s defense is still turning opponents over at a high rate. 

The Crimson Tide have forced 24 turnovers this year, recovering 10 fumbles and picking off quarterbacks 14 times. 

That’s an area of concern for Oklahoma, who has been allergic to ball security. 

In OU’s last outing alone against Missouri, the Sooners put the ball on the ground six times, losing four of those fumbles. 

Quarterback Jackson Arnold was responsible for two of the lost fumbles by himself, the last of which was returned for a touchdown and untimely did OU in. 

If the Sooners are to have any shot of pulling the unlikely upset on Saturday, they’ll have to take care of the football — something that hasn’t happened since the win over Auburn in September. 

While the Alabama defense has been opportunistic, it hasn’t quite been the dominant unit of the Saban Era. 

Opponents have rushed for 132.2 yards per game against the Tide, which ranks 53rd in the country. 

While OU’s offense has struggled this year, there have been glimpses of a rushing attack that can keep the Sooners in SEC games, especially against Ole Miss and Missouri.

Jovantae Barnes’ availability is up in the air, but true freshman Xavier Robinson looked like a difference maker at running back late against Missouri. 

Oklahoma’s path to victory includes winning the turnover battle and having success on the ground to shorten the game, something Vanderbilt was especially good at in its upset victory over ‘Bama earlier this year. 

The Crimson Tide are 18th in the country in third down defense, allowing conversions 31.5 percent of the time, so staying ahead of the chains by having success on the ground will be crucial for Oklahoma’s offense to stay on track.

This is an opinion cartoon.

“In the three weeks since Pickens County dropped down to one ambulance, two women died after waiting an hour for paramedics to arrive.”

That’s the first line of Savannah Tryens-Fernandes’ report on Alabama’s ‘ambulance desert.’

It’s an enlightening report. Read all of it here.

Let’s cut to the chase: Many of Alabama’s rural healthcare issues could be fixed with one stroke of the pen by Gov. Ivey. Expand Medicaid. To include the working poor people of Alabama. Rural Alabama. The places that need at least one more ambulance. Or one more doctor. To save a life. Or two.

Medicaid expansion is frowned upon by Ivey because it’s an Obamacare thing. And because it works. Why not just embrace it and call it yours? That’s how politics works, right?

So, let’s do this: Call it IveyCare. Or TrumpsterCare. What Alabama has now is WeDon’tCare. Maybe we just need NobodyCares.

Medicaid expansion would help cure a lot of ills in this defiant state. If nobody cared who got the credit.

The ‘one ambulance’ problem in Pickens County is a mixed bag of Alabama dysfunction. Read on …

Excerpts from This Alabama county is now down to just one ambulance: ‘It costs lives’

“Pickens County moved to only one ambulance on Oct. 25. The reduction in ambulance service is just the latest in a downward spiral, as rural communities across Alabama watch emergency rooms and hospitals shutter, and as pediatricians, dentists and maternity care have disappeared in over a third of the state’s counties.

“Sullivan McCrory said her team of paramedics has had to triage callers ever since the move to one ambulance. She said it’s not unusual to get two to three calls all within an hour, forcing them to decide where to go based on which call is most life-threatening.

“All I know is people are suffering,” she told AL.com. “What can you do when you have one ambulance in a county with over 19,000 people in it?”

“In 2022, Alabama passed a law deeming emergency medical services and ambulances an essential service, saying “emergency medical services are an essential public service and a part of the health care safety net for many residents of this state.”

“Alabama is one of 37 states to pass such a law. But unlike most other states, Alabama does not require the state government to fund the service.

“U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell represents Pickens County in Washington. Her office said typically the only source of federal funding for those services comes from Medicare reimbursements. She has introduced two bills in the House since 2021 to increase rates for both ambulances and rural hospitals to help them stay operational. But neither bill has received a vote.

“Congresswoman Sewell and our whole team have spent years pushing for congressional action to address these ambulance shortages at the federal level,” said Christopher Kosteva, Sewell’s Communications Director, in a statement to AL.com. “This issue has been exacerbated by the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid, which has put an enormous strain on the resources of rural health care providers.”

“When asked by AL.com if any emergency support could be provided by the state to keep an ambulance running, a spokesperson for Gov. Kay Ivey’s office said “we continue monitoring and are aware of developments in Pickens County, but at this time, you may wish to reach out to local officials.”

Read the whole report right here: This Alabama county is now down to just one ambulance: ‘It costs lives’

True stories and stuff by JD Crowe

The mysterious ‘Bubble Guy’ of Fairhope and the art of bubble Zen – al.com

How I met Dr. Seuss

Robert Plant head-butted me. Thanks, David Coverdale

I was ZZ Top’s drummer for a night and got kidnapped by groupies

Check out more cartoons and stuff by JD Crowe

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @jdcrowe@al.com.

ATMORE, Ala. — An Alabama man convicted in the 1994 killing of a hitchhiker cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures with his hands shortly before he was put to death Thursday evening in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas.

Carey Dale Grayson, 50, was executed at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama. He was one of four teenagers convicted of killing Vickie DeBlieux, 37, as she hitchhiked through the state on the way to her mother’s home in Louisiana. The woman was attacked, beaten and thrown off a cliff.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas earlier this year to carry out some executions. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm said the nitrogen flowed for 15 minutes and an electrocardiogram showed Grayson no longer had a heartbeat about 10 minutes after the gas began flowing.

Like two others previously executed by nitrogen, Grayson shook at times before taking a periodic series of gasping breaths.

The victim’s daughter told reporters afterward that her mother had her future stolen from her. But she also spoke out against the decision to execute Grayson and “murdering inmates under the guise of justice.”

The curtains to the execution room were opened shortly after 6 p.m. Strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed gas mask on his face, Grayson responded with an obscenity when the warden asked if he had any final words. Prison officials turned off the microphone. Grayson appeared to speak toward the witness room where state officials were present, but his words could not be heard. He raised both middle fingers at the start of the execution.

It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson rocked his head, shook and pulled against the gurney restraints. He clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again. His sheet-wrapped legs lifted off the gurney into the air at 6:14 p.m. He took a periodic series of more than a dozen gasping breaths for several minutes. He appeared to stop breathing at 6:21 p.m., and then the curtains to the viewing room were closed at 6:27 p.m.

Grayson was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m.

DeBlieux’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a bluff near Odenville, Alabama, on Feb. 26, 1994. She was hitchhiking from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, when the four teens offered her a ride. Prosecutors said the teens took her to a wooded area and attacked and beat her. They returned to mutilate her body.

A medical examiner testified that her face was so fractured that she was identified by an earlier X-ray of her spine. Investigators said the teens were identified as suspects after one of them showed a friend one of DeBlieux’s severed fingers and boasted about the killing.

DeBlieux’s daughter Jodi Haley spoke with reporters at the media center on prison property after the execution. Haley was 12 when her mother was killed, She said her mother had her life and future stolen from her.

“She was unique. She was spontaneous. She was wild. She was funny. She was gorgeous to boot,” Haley said of her mother.

She said Grayson was abused in every possible way in his youth but “society failed this man as a child, and my family suffered because of it.”

“Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” she said, adding that “no one should have the right to take a person’s possibilities, days, and life.”

Gov. Kay Ivey said afterward she was praying for the victim’s loved ones to find closure and healing.

“Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men,” Ivey said in a statement. “She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered.”

Grayson’s crimes “were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia (bears) no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced,” she added.

Grayson was the only one of the four teenagers who faced a death sentence since the other teens were under 18 at the time of the killing. Grayson was 19.

The execution was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Grayson’s request for a stay. His final appeals had focused on a call for more scrutiny of the nitrogen gas method. His lawyers argued the execution method causes “conscious suffocation” and that the first two nitrogen executions did not result in swift unconsciousness and death as the state had promised.

Hamm said he thought some of Grayson’s initial movements were “all show” but maintained other movements exhibited by Grayson and the two others executed by nitrogen gas were expected involuntary movements, including the breathing at the end.

No state other than Alabama has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. In 2018, Alabama became the third state — along with Oklahoma and Mississippi — to authorize the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.