Entry 195-1
University of Alabama Bass-Fishing Team Wins National Championship
Part 1: What’s the University of Alabama Crimson Tide Bass Anglers Team?
Editor’s Note: The University of Alabama Crimson Tide Bass Anglers (CTBA) have become the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Champions. If you’ve never heard of CTBA or the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship (NCBFC), now you know that the Crimson Tide bassers, sponsored by Strike King Lures, have won a national championship. This up-and-coming college sport, which has gained national recognition and lots of interest from outdoorsmen, will be televised on Fox College Sports.
Hank Weldon of Wetumpka, Alabama, explains that, "We’re a 16-member bass-fishing club at the University of Alabama. We’re ranked No. 1 in the nation by the Collegiate Bass Anglers of America (CBAA). The award went to the CTBA based on our ranking in two national championships. Our university averaged higher weights of bass in the tournaments than any other university in the nation."
In the College Mash Mouth Tournament, CTBA competed against 30 teams, and in the Fox College Sports Tournament, they competed against 50 boats. Although the championship awarded no prizes, no boats and no money, according to Weldon, the University of Alabama team certainly earned bragging rights as the number-one team.
Because the team doesn’t have a budget to make trips and to enter tournaments, they solicit sponsorships from national fishing-tackle companies and anyone else who will sponsor them. "We need money to pay for travel expenses and fishing tackle," Weldon says. 
"We wouldn’t have been able to compete in these tournaments and win the national championship for the University of Alabama without our sponsors, who include Strike King Lures, HOOAH! Energy Bars, Frogg Toggs, Triton Boats, Plano Tackle Boxes, Gemini Sport Marketing, XPoint Hooks and Command Alkon (a Computer Data Company).”
The CTBA sent three teams to compete in one tournament at a cost of $12,000 per team for the competition. Without their sponsors, this University of Alabama bass-fishing team couldn’t have made the trip. The University of Alabama also provided the teams with some funds for competing. But, like all bass fishermen, this team constantly searches for sponsorship to help its members stay in the hunt for the next year’s national championship. The team puts out flyers in local bait shops and does interviews for articles in newspapers and magazines soliciting new members.
Almost every club member wants to become a professional bass fisherman or work within the fishing industry. Since there’s no college courses or curriculum on how to become a bass pro, this ambitious group of college students has decided to create their own program. 
Most of their members major in marketing and sales in the school of business. They’re also learning how to work with sponsors and how the business of fishing and attracting media attention works, very-important component parts of developing a successful fishing career. But also the group has engineers and anesthesia majors in it. One-year old in April, 2007, the University of Alabama team members have garnered attention for their entrepreneurship, their bass-fishing skills, their showmanship and their enthusiasm at the 2007 Bassmaster Classic held in Birmingham, where they worked in their sponsors’ booths while wearing their team jerseys.
More than 100 teams have registered as fishing clubs at various schools in the NCBFC. The Big 10 schools have had fishing teams for about 10 years. However, the phenomenon of college fishing teams just has become popular in the last 3 years. To earn a berth on a national level and compete for the University of Alabama, the CTBA has five qualifying club tournaments. 
This year, the club will hold those five qualifying tournaments on the Black Warrior River, Smith Lake, Lake Martin, Lay Lake and Lake Tuscaloosa. A full-time student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, with a 2.0 or better grade-point average can qualify for the CTBA team. Students, including undergraduate and graduate students, can compete on the team. What a great way for a young man to go to college and build a bass-fishing career at the same time!
Instead of tournament fishing competing with college studies, at the University of Alabama you still can fish bass tournaments, attend college as a full-time student and even compete for your university in national competitions. If you let your grades slip, you’re off the team, just as with any other varsity sport team. To compete on the team, you also must have access to a bass boat. "We qualify a bass boat as anything that floats, is safe and has an operational live well to keep your catch alive," Weldon emphasizes. "You even can fish from a canoe with a large ice chest and an aerator in it."
