Alabama basketball fan AJ McCarron won’t be able to watch the Crimson Tide take on Connecticut in the NCAA tournament semifinals on Saturday night. He has to work.

Alabama is scheduled to tip off its first Final Four appearance at 7:49 p.m. CST Saturday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. TBS will televise the game against the Huskies.

The quarterback for the St. Louis Battlehawks, McCarron also will be playing on TV on Saturday night. The Battlehawks’ United Football League game against the Arlington Renegades at 7 at the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis will be televised by ABC.

“It’s awesome to see,” McCarron said of Alabama’s basketball success. “I know they didn’t play great in the SEC tournament, and the season, they had some big wins and it was up and down, but all you need is a chance to get in. It’s just like baseball in October. If you get in and your team gets hot, all you got to do is make a run, so it’s awesome to see that.”

A keen observer of the sports scene in his hometown of Mobile, McCarron recalls the only other Alabama team to reach the Elite Eight in the tournament.

When McCarron was an 11-year-old, Kennedy Winston was Alabama’s Mr. Basketball for Blount High School in 2002.

Winston then was the leading scorer for the Crimson Tide team that defeated Southern Illinois, Stanford and Syracuse in the NCAA tourney before falling to Connecticut 87-71 on March 27, 2004. The Huskies went on to defeat Duke and Georgia Tech at the Final Four to win the national championship.

“I remember watching back in the day, Kennedy Winston was from Mobile, went to Alabama, was a big-time basketball player and watching him growing up,” McCarron said. “But it’s awesome to see Bama get to the Final Four, and they probably got the toughest matchup out of anybody going against UConn coming up. UConn seems to be absolutely demolishing people, but it should be an awesome challenge for them and definitely a David-versus-Goliath type story to this one, so I’m definitely wishing them the best, and, hopefully, we can pull a win out.”

After earning All-State honors in football and baseball at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Mobile, McCarron was the starting quarterback for Alabama football national-championship teams in 2011 and 2012.

In 2013, McCarron won the Maxwell Award, which is presented annually to the best player in college football.

After spending the 2023 NFL season with the Cincinnati Bengals, McCarron returned to the Battlehawks for a second spring campaign with St. Louis.

Although McCarron had a touchdown pass and 1-point conversion completion with 49 seconds to play in the Battlehawks’ season-opening game on March 30, St. Louis fell to the Michigan Panthers 18-16 on a 64-yard field goal with three seconds remaining.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.