This is an opinion column.

Welcome to Birmingham, Basketball Capital of the South. That is not a typo. That is a Type-A declaration of independence from a lifetime of football hegemony. Add it to the marquee at Legacy Arena. Light up the Regions Center with Big Al and Blaze the Dragon passing the pumpkin, a k a the Wilson Evo NXT day-glo orange mistake that shooters would like to stick a fork in.

Appreciate you, Nick Saban, but for the next two weeks, those of us who have waited a lifetime for these roundball moments would appreciate it if you could be neither seen nor heard.

We are in the upside down here, people. We are less than one week removed from the greatest basketball week in state history, and we are less than two weeks away from the maddest March on record from sea to shining sea.

Pump the possibility straight into my veins. It is somewhere between maybe and probably that one week from tonight, UAB will win the NIT, and four days after that, Alabama will win the NCAA Tournament. Two teams. One state. Same university system. Each of them emerging from two rousing postseason victories last week in the Magic City, then hitting the road to immortality.

This week, that road is I-65 North.