College Football’s Dirty Little Secret
As you probably know by now, the University of Alabama Crimson Tide has just recently won this year’s College Football Playoff National Championship over the Clemson University Tigers by a final score of 45 to 40. The game was a highly competitive, offensive slugfest with 85 total points scored between the two teams, with each of the two teams scoring over 40 points during the contest. The game was filled with a ton of offense, several big plays and enough back and forth action to be thought of as one of the better NCAA championship games to be played over the last 20 years.
It wasn’t Texas v. USC, but it wasn’t one of those one-sided, BCS blowouts of yesteryear either. This year’s Clemson came into the game unbeaten and was pretty much as good as its record would have suggested. One could make the point that Clemson probably could have beat ANY other team in the country this night, but the only problem was that Clemson happened to be playing the Alabama Crimson Tide in this title game.
Alabama, the team with the great defense that had shut out Michigan State in their playoff game played the week before, was vulnerable to the fast-paced, high-powered Clemson offense led by dual threat quarterback Deshaun Watson. Clemson put up 550 yards on Bama and scored those 40 points, but the Tide had that characteristic that real championship teams always seem to have. When Bama, the defensive team with the running game, needs to score big time to keep up with another team’s high powered offense, they can put up a 45 spot themselves.
The game hinged on a couple of minutes worth of key action early in the 4th quarter, after Clemson had scored to go in front of Bama 24 to 21. Alabama drove to a game tying field goal. Then, on the kickoff to Clemson, the Tide pulled off a slick onsides kick where they flanked the Clemson return man and perfectly lobbed a kick to their own coverage man who was able to easily catch it on the fly and give Bama the ball. Instead of getting the ball and giving themselves a chance to go back in front, Clemson was back on defense.
Alabama immediately scored a quick touchdown on a long pass play to go ahead 31 – 24. Then, when Clemson had the ball, their offense was able to go down and get a field goal and cut the Bama lead down to 31 to 27. And then, the Alabama special teams struck again when they ran the kickoff back for a touchdown to stretch their lead to 38 – 27. The lift the Tide got from their special teams was the difference as the two traded a couple of scores into the final score of 45 – 40.
Clemson’s Dabo Swinney flat out got out-coached by Alabama’s Nick Saban.
And THAT is college football’s “dirty” little secret. Nick Saban and his Alabama are just too good. He simply gets the best players to come to HIS school to play. Well, him and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer. Saban gets the best of the South and Meyer gets the best of the North. When ANY of the other coaches go up against one of these two coaching titans in a college football championship game, they always seem to get beat and the two pick themselves up another trophy for another championship.
All of those college coaches with all of their multi-million dollar contracts to build some so called “championship programs” are really just also ran programs to Saban’s and Meyer’s dynastic runs. The numbers are really staggering when you think about it.
Do you realize that for the last ten years of college football, either Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators or Ohio State Buckeyes and Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide have won SEVEN of the last ten championships?
(and don’t forget, Saban started at Alabama in 2007 and Meyer took a couple of years off of coaching between Florida and Ohio State)
You could have played those futures bets in Vegas on who is going to win the NCAA championship and put a bet on Saban’s Alabama and Meyer’s Ohio State (or Florida in the late 2000’s) and you probably have a better than 70 per cent chance of one of your teams winning your bet. And I’ll bet you your payout would be a heck of a lot better than what you were putting out there in bets too.
Yes, as much as they might want you to think about how much parity there is in college football, you could almost bank on the fact that one of these two (or maybe both) will probably be playing in next year’s championship game. And if one or the other gets there, they would probably win there too. Such is their dominance.
You wonder why there are so many bowl games? (And there ARE too many games now. Let’s face it, when they start needing to use teams with losing records, they have too many bowl games) College football needs the bulk of these bowls to give everyone else something to play for. Otherwise, if it’s just the championship you are talking about, it’s just the Nick and Urban show. That’s the secret. These two are the HAVES. Everyone else is a HAVE NOT.
