 On Saturdays in the fall, the Crimson Tide marches to a million dollar beat. Formed in 1912 with only 14 members, UA's million dollar band has led Game Day festivities at the capstone for over a century. The band became a military band in 1917 and was student led for the next decade. Colonel C.K. Butler took over in 1936 and led the band to National Prominence, remaining the director for the next 33 years. And while the million dollar band is well known amongst Tide fans, the origin of the name may not be. It was an off the cuff comment by one radio announcer. I believe it may have been Georgia or Georgia Tech turned to the Alabama announcer and said, you don't have much of a football team. What do you have at the University of Alabama? Well, we got a million dollar band and it seems to have stuck from there fully. It's the same story everybody else has said, but I've heard it a million times. There was an announcer who was announcing a game and he was kind of hounding on the football team and then the band was playing, so he was like, you know, the football team may be awful, but that band, they sound like a million bucks. Believe it or not, Bama's football team hasn't always been great, but the million dollar band has forever done its part to help the Tide roll. Even legendary coach Bear Bryant voiced his support of the band, giving them partial credit for victories. But is it true? Can the band really affect the outcome of the game? I absolutely think the band has an effect on the game. We play after every single play that happens on the field and so, in a way, we're kind of narrating the game. You know, being right next to the student section, once you get the student section riled up, everyone gets riled up. Coach Saban talks about at home the band creating the spirit, the atmosphere. In fact, he said, you know, young children will come to the game. They won't remember. They won't even remember who Alabama played. They won't remember who won or lost, but they'll remember the atmosphere, the spirit that's in that stadium that will keep them coming back years and years and with the band and the cheerleaders and Big Al and that spirit group do is really create that atmosphere. My favorite part of the game is fourth quarter. We always see basket case at the beginning of fourth quarter, and it's just so much fun and everybody gets to dance around and sing. I would have to say pre-game is my favorite moment of game day. I'm out on the field when we're coming out of the tunnels. My favorite song is definitely Right Above It. It was also my best friend. She was on Color Guard and it was her favorite song. Doing pre-game is probably my favorite just because the crowd is all involved. They're doing the Big Bama spell out with us, you know. It's just really cool to do something and then have the crowd respond. Tusk is probably my favorite part of pre-game with the elephant and the crowd gets into it and you just can't help but smile and be like, wow, I'm in this moment. It's awesome. My favorite moment of game days is getting to March halftime. I just think that's really special because it's something that we've worked on for weeks and weeks. We have a lot of fun putting it on and we're playing a lot of fun music and we get to just go out there. It's just kind of crazy to think about 400 people coming together to make these pictures and make this music and it's all happening live and getting to share that with 100,000 people every week. That's definitely my favorite part. And not unlike Coach Saban's teams, the band must work in unison to win the day and it's that collective team effort that makes this experience so remarkable. Playing in the Million Dollar Band means you're playing with other people which become your friends for life. It really is a lifetime friendship so pretty amazing. Butler Field is what I call home. It's where I feel most comfortable. The people that surround me, you know, I know that they're going to be my friends for the rest of my life. I think that it's really special that it doesn't matter what your major is, it doesn't matter what you've been doing that day or if you're having a rough week once a day, every single day you get to come together with your team. What we do before every game is called religion. We all make a circle and we all say Lord's Prayer. And then one person gets in the middle, it's usually an older person, they give like a speech about like the game or whatever, get everybody hyped and then we break it down on BTB. It's been life changing because you make so many friendships and these people truly have your back. Like I can call so many of these people in this band and they would be there for me at heartbeat and I would do the same for them. So it's been life changing because I know that I've built so many relationships that are going to last years to come.