Some things are ‘Bigger than Bama’
Rodney Orr’s memoir is full of fascinating Crimson Tide football anecdotes, but it’s Orr’s candid testimony about extreme family trauma that make it a powerful and highly-recommended read.
The “inside story” of Rodney Orr, “The Tider Insider,” is compelling and inspiring, but also heart-wrenching and tragic. Rodney’s riveting life story is ultimately a testament to the healing powers of deep Christian faith as well as a warning to anyone who might lose their way while pursuing an all-consuming professional dream.
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Any avid Alabama sports fan must be familiar with the Internet fan site Tider Insider, which Rodney founded from a bedroom computer in his home in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1996.
While Tider Insider became an instant hit with fans starved for inside information on Alabama football, many fans of Crimson Tide sports and subscribers to the popular website might not know that while he was growing this business, Rodney’s personal life was imploding due to his late wife’s drug addiction and, as he candidly admits in his autobiography Bigger than Bama, his shortcomings as a husband, father and stepfather.
First published in December 2023, the book, co-written by talented sports writer Ray Melick, chronicles a great entrepreneurial success story as well as the almost unfathomable trials and tribulations endured by the site’s founder.
Until recently, what I knew about Rodney Orr was that he was the founder and proprietor of one of the most-successful fan websites in the nation.
What I didn’t know was that Orr’s wife, Andrea, suffered from ever-worsening drug addiction, which led to the couple’s divorce and then his wife’s death in a 2007 car accident while under the influence of multiple drugs.
As many Alabama fans know, Orr is also the step-father to Brandon Avalos, who once played quarterback at Alabama as well as being a talented baseball player for the Crimson Tide.
Avalos’ promising athletic career was derailed by his own drug addiction, which led to his arrest for drug trafficking. The couple’s biological daughter, also suffered from drug and alcohol abuse and became suicidal in the worst months and years of her mother’s drug addiction.
On the same day Andrea Orr died in a car crash, the husband of Andrea’s daughter Vanessa (Rodney’s step-daughter) died in a motorcycle accident.
From Page 193:
“As I stood there contemplating our circumstances, I felt like a devastating tornado had just swept through our home and debris was scattered everywhere. It was time to pick up the pieces and move on, but where would I start? I feared I was facing a hopeless situation.”
Orr prayed for strength and a sign from God. As told in one of the book’s most memorable vignettes, Orr quickly received a response from God and, he believes, a belated message from his late wife.
Bigger than Bama will appeal to anyone interested in learning how Rodney Orr became a household name to millions of Alabama residents and football fans.
As Orr tells the story, he became the proverbial “world’s biggest Alabama fan” as a small child living in Corpus Christi, Texas. (Orr’s parents were originally from Mobile and his father and older bother were huge Alabama fans. The family moved to Texas in 1966 when Orr was 6.)
Orr, 64, relates that his school friends, who were Texas or Texas A&M fans, teased him about pulling so hard for Alabama, which made him pull even harder for Alabama.
Orr admits he was not a serious student in school (unlike another brother, Dalton, who was the class valedictorian). In fact, Orr had to get his high school degree by attending remedial classes at summer school.
The main subject that “consumed” Orr was Alabama football and trivia, where Orr qualified as a savant.
Once he realized he didn’t have the athletic ability to play for Alabama, he set his sights on becoming a sportscaster, where he thought he might one day be a play-by-play announcer for Alabama sports or, perhaps, cover Alabama sports as a broadcast journalist.
Orr, who had never been to Tuscaloosa, eventually - due to fluke circumstances - had an opportunity to attend college at UA, where he studied communications in the final years of the Bryant era and the first years of the Ray Perkins era.
Orr started Tider Insider while working for a waste management company
After graduating from Alabama, he became a sportscaster in Tuscaloosa and later in Mississippi. While he enjoyed early success as a TV sportscaster, he admits that he lacked maturity and was let-go from his second sportscaster’s job.
After not having a full-time job for almost three years, he later got a job as a sales rep for a major waste management company. (How he got this job is an interesting story).
Orr, who was successful in his new sales job, soon met his wife, a divorcee with two small children.
Orr describes Andrea as being a great beauty with a warm and giving heart and a strong religious faith.
It was Andrea who encouraged her new husband to pursue his dream, which was to start a recruiting newsletter of interest to Alabama football fans.
Readers learn that Tider Insider would have been a magazine except for Rodney’s brother, Dalton, who told him the new, up-and-coming thing was going to be the “world wide web” or the Internet. Instead of publishing a weekly or monthly newsletter, he should start a website, said Dalton.
Rodney listened to his older brother and “Rodney Orr’s Tider Insider” went live in October 1996 (the last year of the Gene Stallings era).
It’s ironic that Dalton, who alway thought Rodney was too obsessed with Alabama football, made the suggestion that convinced Orr to call an audible on his business plan.
Dalton, who was computer and tech savvy, performed the software magic to make the site go live. (Dalton, now a professor at South Alabama, is the co-owner of Tider Insider and the business manager of the company.)
For several years Rodney hedged his bets by operating Tider Insider from a spare bedroom in his Corpus Christi house, while, by day, he continued to service waste management accounts.
For the first years of the business, Tider Insider focussed primarily on football recruiting news. Orr, who had a rabid interest in the subject, would call prospects across the South and then write stories about whether these high school stars were likely to sign with Alabama.
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Site becomes popular with fans almost immediately …
Almost from Day One, the site was a success.
Orr recounts that he used old contacts with a former Tuscaloosa sports anchor (Scott Griffin) to promote his new site. Griffin was now a co-host of a popular radio sports show on WJOX in Birmingham and he let Orr be a guest to talk about his new Internet site.
That appearance led to many “page views” and the segment (and Orr’s recruiting and team expertise) led to recurring appearances. Before long, Rodney Orr was one of the best-known radio guests on talk-shows across the state (including John Longshore and Doug Amos’s show in Montgomery. Even today, Orr is a regular on sports call-in shows.)
The website’s name was apt as Rodney had a knack for identifying important info on Alabama football (even from Texas) and possessed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Alabama sports history and bios of the team’s current players.
Orr, with his wife his biggest cheerleader, had followed his life-long passion and made his consuming hobby into a genuine career, one that would become ultra successful. (Several companies in the same business genre, like Rivals, have made Orr offers to buy his company - for eye-opening prices - but, so far, Orr has always refused).
Orr also admits his timing was fortuitous as he started his Internet site about a year before many other sports entrepreneurs decided to do the same thing.
At first the site was free, but Tider Insider soon started selling paid annual subscriptions.
Almost immediately, Orr learned that hundreds (and then thousands) of avid Alabama fans would spend $40 or $50/year to get the information Orr was providing.
The site was growing so fast that Andrea encouraged him to move the operation to the home of Alabama football, Tuscaloosa.
Orr did just this and was soon covering Alabama practices, coach’s press conferences - and interviewing players - the same as the beat reporters from The Birmingham News or state TV stations.
Before long, everyone keenly interested in Alabama football was checking the site once or many times every day.
While recruiting was still the major content focus, Rodney (and one writer he hired) were covering every angle of Alabama football and all Alabama sports.
Orr never ran out of compelling stories as Alabama football since 1996 has never been boring.
From the sagas of Gene Stallings retiring (and two drawn-out battles with the NCAA) to the stormy tenures of Mike Dubose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Price (who never coached in a game) to Mike Shula and then the arrival of the program’s savior, Nick Saban, Orr had unforgettable game stories and off-the-field soap operas he could cover.
Orr earned his moniker “The Tider Insider” because he developed inside sources that allowed him to break stories no one else had.
For example, Orr had an early source(s) who told him Nick Saban wanted to coach at Alabama, which Orr kept reporting even when most of his subscribers told him he was nuts.
Almost by accident, he and his brother discovered that fans loved to make posts on the site’s message boards, which would often “melt down” and produced many famous posters.
Many posters would veer into politics or other non-football subjects. Instead of banning these posts, Tider Insider created different message boards (like The Quad) for fans to opine on whatever topics they wanted to discuss. This led to repeat traffic at the site and knowledgeable posters sharing Alabama football scoops.
Orr was doing what he’d always wanted to do and his site had become the most-influential Alabama football media organization in a football-crazy state.
Orr candidly admits he neglected his family and wife …
Orr says he was working morning-to-late-at-night, updating stories and following leads - which caused him to neglect his responsibilities to his wife and their children.
Orr is painfully candid in his appraisal of himself as a husband and father.
On Page 138 of the book, Orr reprints a note he saved that was written by his wife during a Sunday church service. The note reads:
“I want to spend the day w/ you. Can you give me one day of your time?”
Another time his wife commented on the exorbitant amount of time he spent on the phone with recruits or chasing down another TI story.
“They get the first of you and we get the last of you … They get the best of you and we get the worst of you,” she said.
In text that must have been difficult to divulge, Orr also admits that on a few occasions he made “cruel” comments about his wife’s appearance and asked her when she was going to get out of their life.
As a stepfather to Brandon, Orr paints a self-portrait of himself as an over-bearing “Little League Dad.”
Once Brandon moved to Tuscaloosa, he quickly distinguished himself as an outstanding baseball player and, later, a quarterback who would sign with Alabama.
Writes Orr: “Nothing he did was ever good enough for me. I put enormous pressure on him which caused him a lot of anxiety, which would blow up on us later.”
Orr tells the story of a phone call he had with his stepson when Brandon was at an out-of-town baseball tournament his parents couldn’t attend.
In his most-recent game, Brandon “proudly” told his stepfather that he went 3-for-5 “with two doubles, a triple and stole a few bases.”
Instead of congratulating him on a great game, Rodney asked him about the two times he didn’t get on base and learned that he struck out on curveballs.
“Brandon, when are you going to learn to hit a curveball?” Rodney asked his stepson.
Wife becomes addicted to Adderall …
Orr says his wife’s behavior and appearance began to change when she became addicted to prescription drugs.
According to Orr, his wife was prescribed Ritalin for ADD, but doctors quickly changed that to Adderall.
While he noticed changes in his wife’s behavior and personality, it was years before he realized his wife was a full-blown drug addict, writes Orr (who admits the fact he was so consumed with running a business made him miss signs of her deterioration).
Eventually, his wife began stealing prescriptions from neighbors and ran up $75,000 in credit card bills. In another memorable anecdote, Orr said he was on the phone doing a live radio interview when law enforcement agents showed up at the house to arrest his wife.
Orr convinced his wife to go to drug rehab, but the interventions never worked.
In 2006, Orr felt he had no other choice but to file for divorce and seek custody of the couple’s children, telling Andrea legal custody could be changed when she overcame her drug addiction.
Sadly, Andrea’s drug abuse grew even worse. (Orr believes she started using illegal “street drugs” in addition to addictive prescription drugs). Before she died in a traffic accident on an Interstate highway near Tuscaloosa, she’d been involved in multiple car accidents, at least one of which she was fortunate to survive.
In approximately the same time period - when Orr was covering the Nick Saban story for TI - Brandon, who had been kicked off the Alabama football and baseball teams - was arrested for dealing drugs.
(Playing for Mike Shula, Brandon started one game as Alabama’s quarterback his freshman year. In that game, according to Orr, Brandon was high on drugs).
The couple’s second youngest daughter had also started using marijuana and alcohol at age 13 and once told Rodney she was going to take her own life if her mother died in one of her previous car accidents.
The evening his ex-wife died in a car crash, Orr’s son-in-law died in a motorcycle accident.
Rodney, who had created one of the most successful sports websites in the nation, was trying to raise two daughters without a mother and keep Brandon out of prison.
Which he did by telling a Tuscaloosa judge that Brandon “wasn’t a criminal. He’s a drug addict.”
(Orr eventually became an expert on the hell drug addiction can cause. As one recovering addict once told him, “the drugs steal your soul. They become the thing you live for.”)
The judge allowed Rodney to place his step-son in a drug rehab facility. Here, God might have intervened, because Rodney had made arrangements to send Brandon to a facility in Arkansas. However, at the last moment, a paperwork issue and a red-flag phone conversation he had with someone at the facility made Rodney look for another drug rehab facility.
Rodney found a facility in Iowa, spoke to one of the counselors of the facility, and decided this facility might be better for Brandon.
While most addicts require many stints in rehab, Brandon was different. This facility and program not only saved his life, but Brandon ended up marrying the sister of the man Rodney had spoken to on the phone.
The family overcomes very dark periods …
A born-again Christian, Brandon now has made it his mission to help other addicts and alcoholics and has been drug-free for years and now has his own large family of six children.
Today, all four of Andrea and Rodney's children are doing very well and Rodney Orr seems to be a completely different person.
He re-committed his life to Christ (as his wife always wanted him to), received a powerful message that he thinks came from his wife after visiting his wife’s grave (I won’t share that story, but it’s powerful).
He decided to write this book because he thinks his story - and painful lessons from his life - can help others who are “struggling.”
A story from after the ‘Cam-back’ game …
One story illustrates the message Orr is trying to share with others.
In 2010, Auburn, led by Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton, rallied from a 24-point deficit to beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
While he was walking to his car after the game, Orr got a call from a successful Florida attorney who is a regular visitor to TI.
As Orr notes, Bama fans were in utter despair and were in melt-down mode on TI message boards.
This man, who had Orr’s phone number, called to vent with the proprietor of TI. During their conversation, the man’s wife interrupted him to ask where they were going to eat dinner.
“You’re asking me about dinner at a time like this,” he replied. “I could not care less about dinner.”
Orr could not let that comment go.
“Bill, do you know how much I would give if Andrea could ask me where we were going for dinner tonight?”
Writes Orr:
“That was 13 years ago. To this day, Bill often tells me how much impact those words had on him.
“It hit me right between the eyes,” Bill admits.
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According to Orr, his late wife was a “beautiful, loving, supportive wife who constantly prayed for me to become the man, the husband, the father that God designed me to be.”
Orr said he did not “appreciate (his wife) until it was too late.”
As to why he wrote this memoir and shared family “dirty laundry” that must still be painful to revisit, he explains that he simply doesn’t want other people to make the same mistakes he did.
He hopes some good might come from nightmare experiences.
As the book’s title tells us, some things are “Bigger than Bama.”
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Note: To have Rodney Orr speak at your church, club or event contact Rodney at 205-246-4539 or email him at: tider7insider@yahoo.com
*** (Subscribers receive original content via email or the Substack app. Subscriptions are available for no charge, although paid subscriptions - $6/month or $55/year - are appreciated. Subscribers have access to all archived dispatches and are welcome to make any comments … just like at TI!) ***
My late father, Bill Rice, Sr., was one of the avid and well-known posters at Tider Insider, especially on The Quad. Dad's posting handle was "WJR1268." That was his initials and the last four digits of our phone number. Rodney didn't know it (until I told him), but he mentions my Dad in his book - a story involving one of TI's nameless posters.
Dad really enjoyed all those conversations. He was a former UA player who posted at the site.
What a powerful story.. sounds like we can all use it as a reminder of what is important, which is why he probably wrote it! Good job, honey.