SALT LAKE CITY -- Using a 3-iron to smack leftover bobbleheads of former Alabama football coach Dennis Franchione was a bigger story than the Tide basketball team being No. 1.

Chasing down Franchoione's successor, Mike Price of Washington State, this week at the Rose Bowl was worth pushing the travel budget of at least one local newspaper, instead of following the top-ranked Tide to Utah on Monday night.

	Mark Gottfried is the coach of the country's No. 1 basketball team in football country.

Remember, Alabama is and always will be a football school.

"No one really pays attention until the bowls are over, and we're not even in one," said Alabama's Darron Boatright, the basketball team's director of basketball operations. "But that's not just at Alabama, that's the whole South, except for Kentucky."

Alabama has been in the national spotlight under Wimp Sanderson and has returned again under Mark Gottfried. The Tide is recruiting as well as any team in the South. They are a legitimate Final Four contender and could well be a national champion.

But the Tide basketball family knows their place in Tuscaloosa. The football team pays the budget and that's not going to change. Any news on the coaching staff or even player personnel might be taken more seriously than Alabama surging to the top of at least one poll.

The Tide can't even get over 7,000 fans on a regular basis at Coleman Coliseum (15, 316). They do expect a sellout for Saturday's game against Xavier, but that's probably only because the Musketeers were ranked and the last of 28 bowl games will be final.

"We got to No. 1 and there was no change in the calls we were receiving in our office," said assistant athletic director Becky Hopf, in charge of media relations for men's basketball. "No jump at all."

But Alabama doesn't have to play the little brother to football in terms of facilities and that's where the Tide needs to play catch up if 'Bama wants to stay competitive. Traditional football schools at Florida, Texas, Texas A&M, Florida State and Oklahoma are in the midst of an arms race. Money that might have usually gone to football has been sliced off a bit to ensure there is enough for major renovations in the men's basketball program.

Getting state-of-the-art practice facilities, coaches' offices, video rooms and plush locker rooms are popping up all over the country at basketball schools. Michigan State. Illinois. Duke. North Carolina. Maryland. Connecticut. Pittsburgh. Xavier. Marquette. Louisville. Memphis. Missouri. All of these schools have improved their facilities markedly over the past few seasons. They are dwarfing the competition to create distance in recruiting and offer something to recruits that they might not find somewhere else.

The SEC is lagging behind, outside of Florida. That doesn't mean Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi State or LSU can't compete for the national title because they don't have nice digs. But ...

"We've lost our 'Wow!' effect," Gottfried said. "If a kid goes into Michigan State's practice facility then he's probably going 'wow' when he walks into the place. We've got to get that here."

Gottfried said there is talk of $25 million being poured into some basketball facilities upgrade. The Tide needs something more than a new coat of paint at Coleman Coliseum. Alabama shares a seven-year-old practice facility with the volleyball and women's basketball teams. Practice times can be dicey. There are no glamorous amenities. Coleman Coliseum got a fresh coat of a paint. The floor has been changed a few times since 1969 when it opened. There is a tipoff club room, and the locker rooms and coaches' offices have been upgraded. But that's about it.

"We've got a button that we can push a projector comes down for a video screen," Alabama assistant Philip Pearson said. "But that's about as high-tech as we get."

Regardless, Alabama doesn't mind the tag of being at a football school.

Others do.

Leonard Hamilton has coached the basketball team at two of the country's most football-dominated programs -- Miami and Florida State.

"I'm still trying to figure out what a 'football school' means," Hamilton said. "Why does it have to be that way? Does Jim O'Brien have to deal with that at Ohio State?"

But the reality remains, says Hamilton, being at a football school has more advantages even if the basketball program has to be patient when it comes time for facility upgrades.

"At least you don't have to introduce where you're from and who you are," Hamilton said.

Salaries for coaches have been pumped up, too. Oklahoma, Florida State, Texas and Florida all paid their basketball coaches football-like, million-dollar salaries. The money is there for that and the capital is around for improvements in facilities.

Alabama just has to be patient and wait its turn.

"They say win and they'll come," Gottfried said. "I say, 'Come and help us win.' Once we hit the SEC hopefully that will all change."

Why? The bowls will be over.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.