One play at a time

As the Tide pursues an historic third straight national championship, it has come down to the final regular season game. Win this one, they go to the SEC Championship. Win that, they go to the big one…where they can wrap up the quest.

But that's thinking way too far ahead. This program has learned that you win championships by winning the next game. And you win the next game by winning the next play. Not one game at a time, but one play at a time - that's how it's done.

And so this week Bama faces another team with big aspirations, and as a result this is being billed as like, the biggest game ever. And from a two-sided perspective, yeah, it is. But for the Tide, they need this game the same as they needed it last year. There is no difference in how important it is to them. They needed to beat a 3-8 Auburn last year as badly as they need to beat a 10-1 Auburn now. They can't meet their goals without it. It's all - all - about the championship.

So it's a big game for the media and most fans because it matches two highly ranked teams from our state. But it's a big game for Alabama…because it's the next one.

Roll tide.

It's getting close...

Just three more days. Let's do this!



ROLL TIDE

What a resume....a rant

Did you see it? If you are a college football fan, you know that the Louisville Cardinals destroyed the mighty Florida Gators in last night's Sugar Bowl. The score was 33-23, but it was far worse than that. Louisville jumped out to a huge 21-3 lead and were never seriously threatened.

It was perhaps the biggest upset in BCS Bowl history. How could this happen?

Well, forgive me while I get something off my chest. It's a pet peeve about the way NCAA basketball tournament teams are selected. It will, no doubt, come into play in 2014 when the football playoffs start. And this game was a perfect example of why it's garbage.

When it comes time for the basketball selection committee to do its work, we are inundated with resume comparisons. This team's resume is better than that team's. How many non-conference teams did you play in the RPI Top 20? Top 50? Top 100? How many of those did you win? We see side-by-sides; we see blind side-by-sides (Team A vs. Team B). Over and over. And the results often do not pass the eye test.

So...this Florida team. They beat USCe (South Carolina). They beat LSU. They beat Texas A&M. They beat Florida State. Their only loss was to Georgia. By resume, they would be a clear choice to be a Top 4 team and qualify for the playoff. (Many thought their resume was enough that they should have been in the Top 2.) But they never - ever - looked the part. There always seemed to be something missing. They never passed the "eye test". And finally it showed. It showed with an embarrassing performance.

Now think about this: how does one go about finding a job? You create a good resume and send out alot of them, right? Good resumes are important; they get you in the door. A good resume gets you on the short list so that you get an interview. But there's always an interview. No employer in his right mind would hire you strictly based on a sheet of paper!

So what makes us think selecting the most deserving teams to play for a championship is any different? Selecting teams based on resume and resume only is equivalent to picking a resume out of a stack and hiring somebody without ever talking to them! Ridiculous. You have to meet them, talk to them, and get a feel for whether they are the right person for the job. Nobody hires from resumes alone.

So you've got to watch teams play. Observe matchups. Evaluate talent, cohesiveness, and discipline. The resume narrows it down to maybe 10 or 15. But the eye has to pick the four. It only makes sense.

Otherwise, you'll get a team like Florida playing for the championship. Ughhhh.

There, I'm done. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

32 days....

Roll Tide

Reflections in the afterglow

I'm still trying to process what I saw Saturday night. It was the most amazing ending under the most intense pressure you'll find in a football game. Everything was on the line for both teams and it was another classic Bama-LSU game. This has become possibly the top rivalry in the SEC. And when TJ Yeldon crossed that goal line....

....well, wow!

The emotion of that night is summed up in this video posted on youtube:
(If you follow this blog, you may recognize someone at the 1:51 mark.)



It was a night I'll never forget. It makes me reflect on other great Bama games of the past. Here is a Top 11 list of games I've been to in the 44 years since my parents first took me to a game. If I thought through it on a different night, the list might be different. By tonight, this seems like a pretty good one. They are selected based on how memorable the game was from an "on-the-field" perspective. At some point, I plan to compile a list based on how meaningful a game might have been from a family/friends or off-the-field point of view. That list will definitely be different.

Note: The list is chronological. It's too hard to rank them! In the case of bowl games, dates are based on the season rather than the actual date of the game.

1. Alabama 14, Penn State 7, 1978. This was in the Sugar Bowl and was the first of five national championships I've seen the Tide win in person. Known mainly for "The Goal Line Stand" where Barry Krauss famously called across the the Penn State QB, "You'd better pass." They didn't.
2. Alabama 20, Georgia 16, 1985. The first final-drive comeback from Bama that I ever saw. After falling behind on a blocked punt with only a minute left, QB Mike Shula drove the Tide to the winning score. Like the game this week, they got into field goal range where they could have tied it, but didn't settle for that.
3. Alabama 25, Auburn 23, 1985. The Kick. Probably the most exciting fourth quarter ever, with four lead changes and a long drive leading to a 57-yard field goal by Van Tiffin. The key to the drive was converting a 3rd-and-18 (with 4th-and-4) after a sack. 
4. Alabama 28, Florida 21, 1992. The very first SEC Championship Game, played in Birmingham. Florida seemed on the verge of blowing it open all night, but never could. Then, Antonio Langham broke a tie with a never-to-be-forgotten pick-6. Bama was SEC champions and headed to play for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
5. Alabama 34, Miami 13, 1992. And this was the result. The heavy underdogs manhandled  the Hurricanes including a famous play where George Teague stripped the ball from Lamar Thomas and returned it. The Canes have never been the same.
6. Alabama 22, LSU 16, 1998. Saturday's game was reminiscent of this one, although there was not nearly as much on the line then. It was memorable because it was an incredible comeback in Tiger Stadium and is the only time I remember where the Tide recovered an onside kick as part of a comeback. They recovered from a 16-7 deficit with less than five minutes remaining.
7. Alabama 40, Florida 39 (OT), 1999. A double digit underdog to the third-ranked Gators, the Tide rode the back of Shaun Alexander to the most exciting overtime win in their history. I never will forget that 25-yard run.
8. Alabama 12, Tennessee 10, 2009. "Rocky Flop." This was almost the negative image of the 1998 LSU game. A vastly less talented Tennessee team hung around and hung around.  Then they scored and got the ball back from an onside kick and could have won with a  field goal. But Terrence Cody blocked his second FG of the day, and Bama had faced their biggest challenge on the way to...
9. Alabama 37, Texas 21, 2009. "Remember the Rose Bowl, we'll win then." There was nothing like winning the national championship in the Rose Bowl venue, because that was where our national tradition had been born in the 1920's.
10. Alabama 21, LSU 0, 2011. Just a dominating performance against an intense rival. Getting to play them with everything at stake was huge, and then to shut them down like that - awesome! And...
11. Alabama 21, LSU 17, 2012. Maybe it's too soon to put it on the list. Maybe the glow is so strong that I have no historical perspective. But this was the most thrilling finish with most on the line...ever. That combination is so rare. If Alabama goes on to a championship, this is the moment where they became that team.

So there it is. Alot of years, summed up in 11 incredible games. There are so many more. You just can't beat college football. Right?

Right!

Two out of three ain't bad

A musical tribute to recent football dominance. Roll Tide!

A football tale

Once upon a time, in a parallel universe, there were two football teams. Two physically dominating football teams, that won games by playing relentless football that wore down the will of their opponents.

One of them had been in the national spotlight for four straight years, having won the championship two years prior. There was only one opponent on their schedule that was able to stay within two touchdowns of them. They had a dominating defense giving up less than nine points per game and gave up by far the fewest yards of anyone. And on offense, they averaged over 35 PPG despite a low scoring game against another overpowering defense. They did all this while playing in the toughest conference in the country.

The other team also played in that conference. And they were equally overpowering. They opened the season by destroying an opponent who had played for the championship the previous year. Other than one game, their closest margin was 13 points. And like the first team, they held opponents to around 10 points per game while scoring an average of nearly 40.

These two teams played several common opponents, and the similarity of the score were uncanny. 41-17 vs. 38-14.  19-6 vs. 24-7.  41-11 vs. 37-6.  52-3 vs. 52-7. And so on.

And so it was destined that they were to meet. During the regular season. It was a classic, a physical clash of titans. Back and forth, back and forth. Finally it ended in a tie. 6-6.

But in this parallel universe, the NCAA never instituted an overtime procedure. Over there, games that ended in a tie, well, ended in a tie. And so it was never settled. Who was really the better team?

If only, as in our universe, there was a way to settle the tie. To decide who was the better team. If only...if only...

But they found a way! They were allowed to play again. At a neutral site. A 60 minute overtime for all the marbles. And so, in that universe, the tie was settled after all.

Who won? Well, tune in January 9 in our universe...you will see.

Game on

Time to claim #14. Roll Tide!