While the rain held off during Alabama's 53-7 win over North Texas on Saturday, the Tide football team had no such luck today. The weather in Tuscaloosa is downright awful, and really isn't expected to improve until later in the week. So expect to see a lot of use of the Hank Crisp Indoor Practice Facility.

Today's indoor practice was in shells, and here's what you need to know:

The Tide is still comfortably behind Texas in this week's polls, but a fair number of the top analysts at various prestigious sports sites are starting to talk about us as having played the best ball in the country so far.  (And justly so, I might add.)

Sometimes this kind of talk leads to a swing in the following week's polls.  If nothing else changes, look for Bama to keep inching up on Texas next week.

Some examples from major college football sites follow are below the fold:

Hey, we're Blogpollin'! My draft ballot is after the jump.

There's a new sherrif at the top of the poll... call me a homer if you must.

Before I get to actually grading the Tide on the areas that needed improvement, I just want to say how thankful I am that Alabama has the coaching staff that it has. After watching the unbelievably poorly coached West Virginia team squander a chance to beat Auburn, I have come to the realization that it has only taken two years and three games for me to become spoiled by this staff.

Anyway, when you win 53-7, obviously the grades are gonna be pretty good. Here's how it breaks down:

It's before 7:30, and I'm about to leave for Bryant-Denny. It's raining, seems miserable, and there's no football on.

Who loves 11:20 kickoffs?!

Aside from all that, it's GAMEDAY!

Here are our links.

• Deadspin takes some cheap shots at Auburn. Obviously, I'm compelled to post this.
• A couple of articles about the pistol formation this morning. One more specifically about Alabama's use of the pistol, and one generally about the formation and how Nevada uses it (as thier primary offense).
• Glenn Gilbeaux from Baton Rouge talks about how many players LSU has in the NFL... then mentions who recruited most of them. (HINT: It's not Curley Hallman).
• Someone doesn't think that Jim Tressel should be Big 10 coach of the year. I'm pretty sure this article says nothing about Tressel's mother, but that's about the only positive thing we can say about this articles treatment of Tressel.
• Finally, another note from the guys at Smart Football - this one about the passing offense. This one is a bit dense, but worth the trouble.

After week one I showed Bama with two As, one B, an incomplete, and an F in the areas I hilighted as being in need of improvement. It's tough to find five areas that really need to be addressed after a 40-14 win, though I'm guessing Coach Saban didn't find it that difficult. I will say that I think it's a safe bet you'll see a reoccurance of the failed item in this week's list of things to improve on.

For the second consecutive week the opponent's score makes it seem as though the Bama defense allowed more points than it actually gave up. And for the second consecutive week, the Alabama defense was dominant.

The Alabama football team worked in full pads on Wednesday. Although it looked all afternoon as though rain might force them inside, it was the lightning that proceeded the rain that sent the squad into the Hank W. Crisp indoor facility for the second half of practice.

Here's what you need to know:

The Alabama offense didn't quite put together a complete game, with both phases of attack working at the same time. But when you score 40 points and top 500 yards of total offense, it really is tough to complain. Throw in a record for your quarterback, a career game for a senior wide receiver, and a breakthrough game for a freshman running back and you have some things to talk about.

FIU brought a decent quarterback and a nice set of wideouts to Tuscaloosa Saturday – but they didn’t bring much else. Without a running game to distract Alabama’s defense, and without good pass-blockers to keep Paul McCall healthy, on his feet, and looking downfield, that wasn’t enough.

Between some nice FIU passing hookups and – arrrgh! – another TD kickoff return, it took the Tide about 40 minutes to put the Golden Something-or-Anothers away. How did they do it?

Here’s how: Like last week, we’ll start off with