When you think of the University of Alabama’s college football team, you probably don’t think of the cubist art movement.
Yet that seems to be the inspiration for the Crimson Tide’s latest series of Instagram posts that have divided the internet.
Wednesday marked the start of the early signing period for college football — where recruits could sign letters of intent to play for programs across the country.
But Alabama’s media team decided to take a peculiar route in announcing their signings, one that seems straight out of the work of Pablo Picasso.
Each signing announcement on Instagram included a gallery of multiple photos. For each recruit, the first image was always a portrait. But instead of just a typical image, the recruits had blocky arms and torsos, while their faces were made without eyes and mouths.
The second part of the gallery was a video that showed the first image again, this time in a picture frame made to look like it was in an art museum. It then zoomed into the frame before finally turning into a typical recruiting video, with the player wearing the team’s jersey and celebrating his college choice.
Alabama’s Instagram account posted some bizarre galleries to announce new recruits, featuring players with no eyes or mouths and blocky body parts (Photo: Dijon Lee Jr.)
It seemed to be inspired by art galleries, with the first photos being incorporated into a video
The remaining slides of each Instagram post were mundane recruiting photos, with players posing with Alabama’s national championship trophies or in the team’s facilities.
Alabama’s Instagram page posted 21 of these recruiting announcements, all in the same bizarre style.
Football fans did not seem to like the style in which these recruits were announced, with many demanding that someone be fired for this display.
“Fire whoever made this now. Right now mfkn,” wrote a user on X, formerly Twitter.
‘Pure nightmare fuel. Someone needs to be fired for coming up with this,” read another post.
Another user said: ‘Not a big fan of the faceless players. It seems disrespectful.”
Many people decided to compare the images to the graphics of video games from the early 1990s, such as what you would see on the Nintendo 64 for example.
“Alabama’s media team is as mediocre as the real football team,” another user wrote.
Alabama currently has an 86 percent chance of making this year’s College Football Playoff
Currently, the Crimson Tide are awaiting their fate to see if they will make the College Football Playoff.
Alabama is currently ranked 11th in the College Football Playoff rankings, making them the second-to-last team to enter the 12-team tournament in contention for a national title.
ESPN currently has Alabama with an 86 percent chance of making the playoffs under first-year head coach Kalen DeBoer.
The selection show takes place Sunday at noon on ESPN.