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It’s a new year and a new reality for Alabama football.
After hearing arguments for why Alabama should’ve been chosen for the College Football Playoff over SMU, Indiana or any playoff team without the pedigree of Alabama, the Crimson Tide spent New Year’s Eve reminding everybody why they were left out in the first place — by losing a game in which they were heavily favored against an opponent that was supposed to be overmatched.
Alabama was a 17-point favorite over Michigan, just like it was a 14-point favorite over Oklahoma and a 23.5-point favorite over Vanderbilt. It’s a loss that many people, fans and media alike, are taking great pleasure in, using it to dunk on Alabama’s omission from the playoff even though most of the noise made about Alabama’s exclusion didn’t come from Alabama itself.
And it’s all pointless noise.
The primary takeaway from this latest loss is that it should be definitive proof that the Alabama we once knew, the most terrifying force in the sport, the team everybody had to get through to win a title, is no more. It turns out Nick Saban, the greatest college football coach in the history of the sport, was an integral part of the program’s dominance.
Who knew?
In the first season post-Saban, Alabama suffered as many losses as a favorite of 14 points or more as it did during Saban’s entire tenure. According to TruMedia, the Tide went 135-3 as a favorite of 14-plus under Saban. They went 6-3 this year.
This is not an indictment of first-year coach Kalen DeBoer, though I don’t know if every Alabama fan will agree with that. It’s more of a statement on the situation and the reality of how difficult it is to reach and remain at an elite level in this sport — particularly now in the era of the transfer portal and NIL,…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/alabamas-new-reality-the-kalen-deboer-era-will-never-match-nick-sabans-run-and-tide-fans-must-accept-that/
Author : Tom Fornelli
Publish date : 2025-01-01 16:31:00
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