Greg Byrne: The Best Athletic Departments Honor Their Past

University of Alabama athletic Director Greg Byrne spent some time with Tide 100.9's very own Ryan Fowler on Friday evening, discussing a variety of topics around the University of Alabama.

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Byrne provided updates on Alabama's old school logo, the new basketball arena, and honoring coach Saban, among other things around the university.

One of the first questions Fowler asked was about the honoring of the University's lone elite eight team from 2003-2004,

The best athletic departments honor their past. They're focused on today and create vision for the future. Part of honoring the past is recognizing some of those special teams. To get Coach Gottfried and and the team back this weekend will be a special thing for all of those guys, for our team, and for our fans to celebrate. One of the great things, and it's football related, but on of the tings that I really enjoy that I get to do on Saturdays, a gameday during the fall, I get to meet with the honorary captains in my office, usually gameday mornings, and I just hear the stories about the history of the University of Alabama from their perspective. When you have guys who played for Coach Bryant, I always ask them what was your favorite Coach Bryant story? And then the guys who played for Coach Saban, the same thing, and everybody else in between. It gives you a great opportunity to learn about our history and what's important to everybody, so having those reunions and a time to get everybody back together is really important.

Fowler also asked Byrne about the old school 'block A' logo that multiple Alabama coaches are sporting, and Alabama basketball is wearing during their game Saturday against Texas A&M,

My earliest memory of the University of Alabama isthat logo, so we all have a lot of pride in it. We do want to show it and use it, and we have and we will continue to. This is probably going to be a little more prominent than what we have done, in the last seven years that I've been here anyways. I thin kit's a great logo, I love to see it. I know our kids like it. Our fanbase seems to like it too. But you know, we also have a lot of power in the script A as well, and that's been around for a long time. People recognize that no matter where you are. So I think you can have an opportunity to have a balance. You don't want to have too many logos, even though I've got a few pullovers and such, you don't want to crowd or make your logo or your brand where there's too much of it. At the same time, I think that's one that's been very consistent that people have really celebrated and embraced it. So it's really cool that our teams are going to use it this weekend.

You can listen to Greg Byrne's full interview with Ryan Fowler on the Tide 100.9 app. Catch The Game With Ryan Fowler on weekdays from 2-6 p.m.