Nov 14, 2013
Before the last weekend of college football action, it felt reasonable to hedge any positive comments on the Alabama Crimson Tide and thoughts on Nick Saban’s team claiming a third consecutive BCS national championship, their fourth in five seasons. However, Alabama’s 38-17 victory over the LSU Tigers suggest very strongly that there will be no stopping this team again this January. It should take a very brave person to bet against them right now.
The 2013 season has been so typical of Saban’s tenure. An early season 49-42 victory against Johnny Manziel and the Texas A&M Aggies suggested enough weakness for the rest of the SEC and other college contenders to believe that the Crimson Tide could be toppled. A load of comfortable victories followed of course, but there wasn’t a lot in terms of the strength of opposition to get excited about.
Saturday’s big SEC match-up against regular rivals and big challengers LSU looked like a game that could be a stumbling point, or at least one where Alabama would look beatable. If the likes of Florida State, Ohio State, Stanford and Baylor were watching that match-up, then they would have felt little encouragement.
The game itself was a story of two halves. LSU looked every bit as good as Alabama through more than half of the game. They competed hard along the lines and they managed to restrict AJ McCarron and T.J. Yeldon through the opening passage of play. Colby Delahoussaye’s 41-yard field goal a little under eight minutes into the third quarter tied the game up at 17-17.
It was at that point that Alabama’s depth and talent separated itself from the Tigers, and probably the rest of college football. Yeldon started to exploit gap after gap and worked in perfect tandem with McCarron, who more and more must garner serious attention from NFL teams entering this season’s draft. Yeldon grabbed touchdowns either side of the third/fourth quarter divide and McCarron capped off the scoring with a TD pass – his third of the game – in the final five minutes of the game.
The fact is that Saban’s team once again just looks a class above its toughest competition. A slip up is conceivable in a season ending road game against the firing 9-1 Auburn Tigers, but Auburn’s 35-21 defeat at the hands of LSU does suggest quite strongly otherwise.
After that, a match-up against the Missouri Tigers or South Carolina Gamecocks in the SEC championship game should be a good contest, but still doesn’t genuinely look like a serious threat.
The Seminoles are enjoying a fantastic season and have some serious weapons led by ever-impressive Jameis Winston. However, it still doesn’t feel like Florida State are a team that compete physically with or without the ball against a battle tested SEC opponent.
As the BCS era comes to an end, Alabama looks ready to cement its dominance at the end of that period once and for all. Recent years have seen a familiar cast of strong colleges continue to dominate the sport, but no team can claim the level of control that Saban and the Crimson Tide have mastered in recent years. To find that type of dominance you have to look back into the pre-BCS era. It feels like McCarron, Saban and this Alabama team are destined to finish off an era of college football by cementing their dominance upon it.
