Alabama football and the absence of skepticism

Alabama players by Stan Jones

By Matt Zemek

Every football team faces questions every season, but that’s a natural and inherent part of life, not a plot complication. Facing questions in August, before the start of a football season, is as normal as breathing air, drinking water, or feeling drowsy after eating a massive Thanksgiving meal. There is a difference between facing questions and facing skepticism.

Despite being successful at a relatively high level, Ohio State faces skepticism to a certain degree in most years. Ohio State fans watched their team win the Big Ten title and defeat USC in the Cotton Bowl last year, en route to a 12-win season. 99 percent of programs would kill for that kind of season, but at Ohio State, the journey and the destination both felt like a slight disappointment. Skepticism about Ohio State’s offense was warranted, given that ever since Tom Herman left Urban Meyer’s side, the Buckeyes have not hummed with efficiency the way fans expect. Of course, Ohio State receives less skepticism than any other Big Ten program, purely in terms of wins and losses, but the Buckeyes are not entirely immune to doubts within their own fan base. The same is true for USC in the Pac-12 and Oklahoma in the Big 12.

If any college football programs merit total trust — complete faith that everything is going to work out in the end — on a relentlessly annual basis, Clemson has just begun to create that kind of reputation. The Tigers might be there, but even if you think they aren’t, they’re certainly close.

The one program which arrived at that point years ago — and clearly inspires more confidence in its success, both inside and outside the inner sanctums of the fan base, practice field, and locker room — is Alabama.

Let’s say Clemson makes the Sugar or Peach Bowl this coming season. That’s a New Year’s Six bowl but not a College Football Playoff semifinal — the Orange and Cotton are the semis in 2018. Clemson fans would be disappointed, and understandably so, but the sense of “the earth is crashing down upon us” would not be that acute. Clemson fans are still at a place where this run engineered by Dabo Swinney has been so spectacularly successful that a brief interruption or discontinuation of that success would not diminish the memories of the previous three glorious seasons. If an NY6 bowl is a “down season,” that’s still a huge improvement for Clemson relative to the 30 years which preceded the awakening of the program.

At Alabama, it is different.

It is always different.

This is not a place which came to life at an unprecedented level when Nick Saban came to town. This is not Clemson, where the current run under Dabo is — without question — the greatest run in the program’s history, whether on a three-year level or a decade-long level. (Only the 1980s under Danny Ford comes close, but Clemson made only one signature New Year’s Day bowl that decade. The program has made an NY6 [formerly BCS] bowl five times this decade and is poised for more.)

Yes, one could say that what Saban is doing now is better than what Bear Bryant did, but the point to emphasize here is that outrageous success is not a new thing in Tuscaloosa. It is part of the local culture, expected and demanded. The Bear cemented these expectations in his legendary career, and decades before he brought his houndstooth hat to the Capstone, Alabama’s 1926 Rose Bowl win over Washington gave the Tide and other Southern programs the belief that they could compete and win on a national level. Alabama is riding high today, but many previous decades and achievements at the top tier of the sport laid the foundation for what Saban has done in the 21st century. Clemson did not have that kind of history or pedigree to lean on. Dabo is making history anew. Saban — though the undisputed king of the realm in college football, very realistically the greatest coach of all time — nevertheless stands on the shoulders of the Bear.

This is meant to underscore the point that Alabama, unlike Clemson, is not residing in new space. This is a frequently traveled path for the Crimson Tide, merely the latest example of excellence in a long succession of triumphs. Several coaches — Ray Perkins, Bill Curry, Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, and Mike Shula — didn’t meet the Bear’s standard, but ever since Paul W. Bryant retired, Alabama has never ceased to be a program where the right coach could take the torch from the Bear and win big. Success is culturally and emotionally expected in several different places in college football, but nowhere more relentlessly than Alabama.

This is the most skepticism-free place in college football… and in 2018, there might be less cause for skepticism than in several years.

Here is the explanation for that last statement:

For one thing, Alabama is coming off a season in which it received the benefit of the doubt from the people who matter most in college football: the members of the playoff selection committee. Everyone outside the state of Alabama will argue until the cows come home about whether the Tide deserved to be in the playoff field over Ohio State or UCF, but no one can dispute the simple fact that when given said benefit of the doubt, Alabama made full use of it, curb-stomping Clemson and then coming back against Georgia to win it all… AGAIN. Purely in relationship to the committee in early December, Alabama has to feel good that if it’s a close call, it will get the nod over a competitor.

Another reason this Alabama season carries less skepticism than in several years: An 11-1 or 12-1 season has frequently not prevented the Tide from making the playoff (or in previous years, the BCS championship game). To be even more precise about this point, the old saying about college football — “better to lose early in the season rather than late” — simply doesn’t apply to Alabama this decade. The Tide lost in the second week of November to Texas A&M in 2012 but still made the BCS title game. They lost in November to LSU in 2011 and still got in. They lost in late November last year and still made the playoff. Alabama is the exceptional college football program, the colossus immune to the normal forces, rules and dynamics which apply to others. Skepticism? Even if this team loses once, that’s highly unlikely to prevent the 2018 Tide from making the playoff and, very probably, the final game of the season in Santa Clara, California, in January of 2019.

The elimination of skepticism surrounding Alabama in 2018 — or at least, the reduction of it to the point of insignificance — becomes still more pronounced when realizing that Alabama underperformed last season relative to its normal expectations… and not for the first time.

Alabama has won a national title after an underperforming regular season before. The 2011 campaign did not have an SEC West title or an appearance in the SEC Championship Game. The big conference game of the year — LSU — was a loss. Yet, Alabama got inside the gates of the championship system, played an SEC school in the title game, and more specifically, played the SEC champion in the title game… and won. All those ingredients were present in last season’s journey. Alabama won the national title despite FAILING to hit several of the targets (SEC West title, SEC championship, victory over its foremost division rival) that it expects to hit each season.

If you recall the transition from 2011 to 2012, Alabama’s offense figured to be much better in 2012 than the previous season, with A.J. McCarron having another year of experience under center. That is exactly what unfolded, and without that improvement on offense, Bama would not have beaten Georgia in a 2012 SEC Championship Game classic. The national title game beatdown of Notre Dame was anticlimactic.

This year, the move from Jalen Hurts to Tua Tagovailoa should bring forth a similar improvement in Alabama’s offense, specifically the passing game. Hurts can still be used as a change-of-pace running quarterback to give the Tide more options. Hurts’ limitations as a passer didn’t stand in the way of consecutive national title game appearances for Bama in the 2016 and 2017 seasons, so with an improved quarterback situation this year, why should skepticism increase? It’s hard to see how skepticism can ever grow in Tuscaloosa.

Losing one game doesn’t matter. Failing to win the SEC West doesn’t matter… and typically, whenever Alabama DOES fail to win the SEC West, it usually wins the division — and conference — the following season. The only exception in the Saban era since the restorative 2008 season? 2010, the only season in the past 10 years in which Alabama hasn’t played in a New Year’s Six (formerly BCS) bowl game.

Skepticism. So many things in life deserve to be doubted and need to be questioned. Alabama football doesn’t exist in that normal universe… and the 2018 season doesn’t figure to be the year in which prevailing assumptions about the Tide will be shaken to their foundations.

About 14Powers.com 4609 Articles
14Powers.com: Serving SEC Football, Basketball and Baseball fans since 2016.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.