‘Cigars in the locker room, lighters in my pants’: Greg McElroy spills secret about the 2008 Alabama-Tennessee game
There’s nothing wrong with lighting up a victory cigar after another Alabama win over Tennessee, but you might wait until the clock hits zero, especially if you’re under center for the final snaps. Greg McElroy kept a secret for 14 years, confessing he had lighters in his pants as the final seconds ticked during the Tide’s 2008 win over the Volunteers in Knoxville.
McElroy tweeted a video confessing his premature celebration ahead of Alabama’s game against Tennessee on Saturday.
READ: Are Alabama fans smoking too many cigars?
“I’m not gonna lie, I have completely forgotten about this moment in my college career,” he said. “Completely forgotten about it. It’s been 15 years, so I feel like the statute of limitations is essentially over. I don’t think coach Saban’s gonna be upset with my not focusing on the play and focusing more on the postgame festivities.
McElroy said he, then the backup quarterback to John Parker Wilson, and other players had hundreds of cigars awaiting them in the visiting locker room with just one problem: No lighters to fire them up after the win. He said they began asking fans in the stands to toss them lighters so they could partake in the annual tradition.
“They tossed down five or six plastic Bic lighters,” McElroy said. “So I stuffed them in my pants and was like ‘We’re all set, we’re covered.’”
Then the unexpected happened: Nick Saban called No. 12 to come in for mop-up duty. “Go play? What? I’ve got cigars in the locker room, lighters in my pants, and you want me to go in the game?!”
He did, and he didn’t want Saban to know he was already planning the celebration. “So I went in there, and I can probably say I’m the only SEC football player or college football player, for that matter, in the last 60 years or so to play with lighters in his pants. Not my proudest moment, but looking back on it…pretty good.”
Alabama won the game 29-9 behind Glen Coffee and Roy Upchurch rushing touchdowns and Leigh Tiffin field goals, and we assume the backup quarterback and the rest of the team lit up as they’d hoped thereafter.
Watch McElroy tell the story in the tweeted video below.