EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

Long-snappers rarely get mentioned unless they make a mistake, so we must first point out that Carson Tinker was nearly perfect during his four years at Alabama.

Tinker, the Crimson Tide’s starting snapper on punts and place kicks from 2010-12, is credited with executing 133 of 135 snap attempts during his career. The latter two of those seasons ended in national championships, giving Tinker — who wore No. 51 at Alabama — a third ring after the one he received as a redshirt freshman in 2009.

Tinker — who finished high school in Tennessee but spent much of his childhood in Alabama — later spent 11 years in the NFL, primarily with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He won a Super Bowl ring with the Los Angeles Rams at the end of the 2021 season.

But it is for the events of April 27, 2011, and their aftermath that Tinker is most widely known. A massive EF4 tornado ravaged Tuscaloosa, severely injured Tinker and killed his girlfriend, fellow Alabama student Ashley Harrison.

Tinker’s home on 25th Street in Tuscaloosa took a direct hit from the storm, literally ripping Harrison from Tinker’s arms. Tinker was thrown more than 50 yards, and woke up in at DCH Regional Medical Center with a broken wrist, an injured ankle, cuts on his head and a concussion.

In addition, he learned that Harrison, who was 22, had been killed. She was among 348 people — 53 in Tuscaloosa and six of them University of Alabama students — who died as a result of the massive storm system that tore across Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi that day.

“They both got thrown from the house,” Alabama teammate Colin Peek told reporters soon after. “He didn’t understand what happened. He had a concussion and got knocked out before he was taken away. She died instantly. Luckily she didn’t suffer.”

Tinker recovered from his injuries in time to run out of the tunnel with his teammates and play in the Sept. 3, 2011 season-opener vs. Kent State. He didn’t miss a game in either of the next two seasons, as Alabama went a combined 25-2 and won back-to-back national championships.

Tinker also poured himself into helping the Tuscaloosa community recover from the storms, working alongside numerous Alabama teammates with Coach Nick Saban’s Nick’s Kids Foundation and other organizations to raise money, clear debris, distribute relief supplies and rebuild housing and local businesses. He also visited with a 10-year-old Tuscaloosa boy who had lost his sister and both parents during the storm.

That December, he accepted a Disney Spirit Award on the team’s behalf at ESPN’s College Football Awards Show.

“It really is inspiring to see the impact I can have on people outside football,” Tinker said in 2012. “I’ve said this a long time ago and it’s been my mantra: to be a blessing to people. That’s something I try to do every day.”

Prior to his senior season at Alabama, Tinker was awarded a scholarship by Saban. It was a relief for Tinker, who had bet on himself after turning down scholarship offers from smaller programs out of high school in order to walk on with the Crimson Tide.

“We’re very excited that we’re able to award a guy that has been such a positive influence in so many ways,” Saban said at the time. “Personally, academically and athletically in our program.”

Added Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, “Carson has been through a lot and he’s bounced back really well from everything he’s been through and all that life’s thrown at him, all the adversity. He’s done a great job of handling everything.”

Tinker’s college career ended in triumph, a 42-14 rout of Notre Dame in the 2013 College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Miami Gardens, Fla. A little more than a year later, he published a book (written with Tommy Ford and featuring a foreword by Saban) about his experiences playing football at Alabama and with the tornado titled A Season to Remember: Faith in the Midst of the Storm.

“Kind of the whole theme for me was, you either live in vision or you live in circumstance,” Tinker told AL.com in 2014. “For me, this is part of my vision. I wanted to help people and in the process of writing the book, I actually learned a lot more of the little details that I missed at first glance. It was a blessing to me to even go back and have a little bit more of a realization of what went on.”

And he didn’t shy away from writing extensively about his Harrison’s death.

“I went through every detail in the book,” Tinker said. “I really want the book to be a positive thing, but I felt like in order to do that, I had to go through the little details of exactly what happened on the day of the tornado, talking about my injuries and my loss.

“I feel like only the wounded have the power to heal and I wanted people to be to see what I think is the worst in my life and how God took that and used it for good. In order to do that, people had to see how I really was struggling.”

Tinker retired from football in August 2024, and has regularly made public-speaking appearances and worked with various charities and youth groups over the years. He married the former Annie Bates in 2015.

Coming Friday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 50, an Alabama quarterback who piled up touchdowns on the way to a Heisman Trophy.