'Living the dream': Remembering Alabama basketball manager Charlie Wilson

Charlie Pierce Wilson’s interview had to be held in a hidden location, somewhere Alabama basketball managers knew no one else would go.

Normally, they hold interviews in the office at Coleman Coliseum. But if assistants Bryan Hodgson and Antoine Pettway, who had known Wilson for years, saw him, the managers figured the coaches would distract.

So, the managers interviewed Wilson downstairs in the CM Newton room.

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“We were afraid of somebody coming in,” head manager Perkins Carden said, “because they all liked him so much.”

Which is why, when Wilson died at 20 on Monday, it prompted an outpouring of support from the Alabama basketball team, including coach Nate Oats and players past and present. Wilson died after a fall during a seizure.

He dealt with seizures at different times in life, so his father, Charles Wilson, usually kept track of his location. Often, his son was at his apartment. Sometimes class. Most of the time, however, he was at Coleman Coliseum.

“He was living the dream, being part of Alabama basketball,” Charles Wilson said.

That began in third grade when Wilson first attended an Alabama basketball camp. There, he met Pettway.

After attending those camps for years, he worked one in summer 2021. Then Wilson became a manager. Immediately, Carden knew the managers needed to find a role for Wilson on game days. That’s not a given for first-year managers. They must work their way up. However, Wilson was given a game day role early.

Why him?

“Just his energy, man,” Carden said. “Everybody felt better when Charlie was around. He had a way of improving the mood no matter what was going on.”

He was known even more for his passion.

Take his role as Alabama’s coach in the manager games held each night before the formal contests during the regular season. Instead of playing, Wilson wore a full suit and tie, holding a clipboard and flipping a towel over his shoulder.

And he was never passive.

“At least once a game, he would get into it with somebody from the other team,” Carden said. “If somebody called a foul he didn’t like, he would go at them.”

That fiery spirit was nothing new. Since his days as a kid in Aliceville, Wilson was never afraid to make his sports opinions known and debate them with any willing participants. Among the tributes his father has seen this week are those wishing they could argue with Wilson one more time.

Wilson was always about fun discourse. So much so he printed out and posted manager rankings on the bulletin board each week, based on how well he thought each performed their duties the previous week.

“Just starting a discussion,” Carden said. “Everyone looked forward to it on Monday.”

Wilson seldom kept quiet at any sporting event he attended. His father said fans loved to sit around his son at high school games given his appetite for boisterously offering officials his opinion. Wilson spoke his mind at basketball games, too, but he usually knew what he was talking about when he noted a bad call.

When his high school coach, Jeremy Pate, was without an assistant during Wilson’s senior year, he served as the de facto assistant off whom Pate could bounce ideas.

“You don’t see many people that have the passion and the competitiveness and overall love of the game that (Wilson) had,” Pate said.

In the same Pickens Academy gym where Wilson got after officials and could always be heard, he also accepted Jesus as his savior. One night at an evangelist event when Wilson was about 7 or 8, he professed his faith.

“The place that got him into heaven,” his dad said, “is the place where he gave everybody else hell.”

Nick Kelly covers Alabama football and men's basketball for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at nkelly@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter: @_NickKelly

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Remembering Alabama basketball manager Charlie Wilson