- First and most obvious: congrats to the Alabama Crimson Tide and Coach Nick Saban. You go 14-0 with your last two wins against the second-ranked teams in the land, you’ve earned the right to be called national champs.
- That being said, my respect for Mack Brown’s head coaching skills increased considerably last night. His star quarterback gone for the night, replaced by a talented true freshman who played like a talented true freshman, no running game, a shaky offensive line, half his receiving corps unable to hold onto the ball and a defense that couldn’t stop the run when it needed to in the first half – all of that topped off by a disastrous turnover at the end of the first half that put ‘Bama up by eighteen – it would have been easy for his troops to have completely imploded. Yet, with about three minutes to go, the ‘Horns found themselves in a position to drive for the tie or the lead. That’s one helluva coaching job.
- I say this as someone who’s got a serious appreciation for A.J. Green, but if you want to insist that Jordan Shipley was the best wide receiver in college football this season, I’m not going to argue with you.
- I don’t know which surprised me more, that Saban called for the fake punt early in the game or that Texas had it defended.
- That ricochet off the ‘Bama player was one of the coolest onside kicks I’ve ever seen.
- Groundhog Day in the broadcast booth: Once more, Musburger gushes about a quarterback “growing up before our eyes” and Herbie continues in his half-shout that sounds like an 80-year old man in need of a hearing aid. The sad thing is that it was still better than most of what Fox inflicted on us.
- Is it really that hard to figure out what pass interference looks like? It didn’t have an ultimate impact on the game, but that stretch where the officials blew call after call after call was brutal.
- Julio Jones may not have had that great a night as a receiver, but he was hell on wheels as a blocker.
- Any way you want to look at it, four MNCs in a row for one conference is an impressive feat – especially since it was accomplished by three different schools.
- I always hate it when the season ends. When did you say spring practice starts?
BCS title game ruminations
Filed under BCS/Playoffs, Nick Saban Rules, SEC Football
Get The Picture 
Don’t forget, we still have “Silly Season” and recruiting to go.
The beauty of CFB is that it never ends, and it will be that way whether we have a playoff or not.
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Herbstriet’s call of games sounds like when you’re sitting next to the asshead on a cellphone who is talking twice a loud as necessary.
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Larry David handled that by yelling even louder to a vacant seat until the bufoon on the cell got up and left.
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Blair Walsh is ready to be named first team all-SEC when you are, AP… coaches…
Malcolm Williams made me consider, for a moment, smashing my hands with a hammer to see what it was like to have hands that were completely useless.
Jordan Shipley was phenomenal. How he got open time and time again just astounded me… especially since Texas didn’t have another receiving threat.
This is why you work your #2 qb instead of having him fair catch punts.
Texas with McCoy might not have beaten Alabama, but if he stays in, scores a td on one or both of those first two drives, and Alabama is staring 14-0 or 10-0 in the face after seven minutes of game time…
On the one hand, Greg Davis deserves some credit for getting what he did out of Gilbert. On the other hand, I really hope Bobo wasn’t taking notes. His play-calling was about as plain as it could possibly be. I know that has to do with true freshman… yada, yada… but, this is the 14th game of the season. When they finally let him make some throws and get some comfort level, he performed relatively well. However, I do understand Texas fans’ frustrations with their OC. And, why run the hurry-up if you are just going to plow straight into the line for no gain? That’s just putting your defense back on the field quicker.
The end of the first half was Les Miles-ish in its whole and complete epic failure of time/game management. You have a true freakin’ freshman at qb, you are still 30 yards away from a long distance field goal, you are only down 11, and you get the ball to start the 2nd half. There are 15 seconds on the clock. TAKE A KNEE! I would have had an aneurysm had I been a Texas fan.
Congrats to Saban for winning 10+ games in back-to-back seasons. There comes a time for everything, and, unfortunately for the rest of the SEC, it doesn’t look like it’s coming to an end any time soon.
Mark Ingram is a beast. Julio Jones is a helluva tight end. Alabama’s offensive line hasn’t been called for holding in their last 9 1/2 games. How is that even possible? Offensive linemen hold nearly every play, and there wasn’t even one that an SEC official decided was holding? That’s laughable… or something.
Congrats, Yeller Hammers. What’s this now? 8? 13? Whatever. I’m sure you’ll remind us everyday until the next one.
C’mon, Signing Day, then Spring Ball.
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RE: Your first point
Amen! Tiffin has a national championship to go along with his 4-5 PAT misses, so let him enjoy that and give the All-SEC title to the player that really deserves it.
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Excellent point on having your back-up ready to play instead of having him fair catching punts.
What Senator, no playoff bashing articles today?
Or is it still early.
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Is there something in particular you wanted me to address? 😉
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Is there any way that the onside kick was intentional? I mean can you possibly scheme to kick the ball hard into a lineman’s chest 14 yards away?
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I thought the same thing. It looked like a squib kick that just bounced Texas’s way.
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It looked like the boneheaded lineman reached out and tried to field the damn thing instead of just getting out of the way.
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I was kind of surprised to hear them say that Kirby Smart was interviewing for the Texas Tech heading coaching job during the broadcast. Seems like a pretty rapid ascent for the guy if he actually gets it. I’m pretty sure if he’s already on short lists for HC jobs, DC at UGA is not on his radar.
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For the record, Texas Tech’s AD vehemently denied reports that Smart would be interviewed for a job. And Mark Schlabach said this morning that he expects Smart to “at least listen to Georgia.”
Personally, I still think we end up with someone from the NFL like Todd Grantham. But we’ll see.
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I think Texas Tech may have limited options, what with the previous coach suing them, and potentially having grounds to win the suit.
If Kirby is his last name, he’ll know to avoid a situation like that.
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Kirby has a lot to lose if he took the HC job at TT. His rocket ride would end in a wimper.
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I would be happy to fail at a job that paid 5X my current salary.
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On the other hand, what’s he got to prove staying where he is versus how good it would look on a résumé to turn around a struggling defense at a major program? I’m not advocating for Smart’s hire, I’m just sayin’. And whether he’s on short lists for HC jobs is just more rumor, isn’t it?
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Did anybody else catch Musberger referring to Smart as an Alabama grad during the broadcast?
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and in the pre-game show he referred to the United States “Miracle on Ice” hockey game as a win over….Finland???
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No he was referring to the fact that the Miracle on Ice game was not the finals of that Olympics and in fact that US needed to get a win over Finland to win the gold medal. In this case he was saying that Bama was the US, Florida was USSR, and Texas is Finland.
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I believe he was talking about Texas Tech’s president being a Bammer . . .
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The Musberger “growing up before our eyes” line was really hard to take, I have watched maybe five games this year where he was the play by play guy, I normally try to avoid him like the plague. Off the top of my head I can think of at least three games this year out of the five or so that I heard him say the same thing or something extremely similar. Matt Barkley in the USC-OSU game being one and Terrelle Pryor in the Rose Bowl last week being the other. With all that said, I agree the Fox Team, as a unit is worse than Musberger.
Despite the great achievement of winning four NC’s in a row, if next year the SEC champ happens not to win the NC and Tech beats us be prepared for plenty of talk about how the ACC has passed us from the Techsters.
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If Kirby, or Grantham or whoever can get our defense to be just 2/3 of Bama’s, especially across the front, I will be happy as an elephant in California.
Man, have you ever seen such athleticism by big guys?
Quote of the game, from Mr. Dareus, and a summation of Bama’s attitude: “It felt good”
Never in his wildest dreams did Bear see a defense like this one.
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1. I think Kirk Herbstreit was calling the game from the Alabama student section. Why are you shouting Kirk?
2. Does Nick Saban EVER look happy? I mean I don’t think I ever saw him even crack a smile last night. Not trying to read to much into this, but I don’t think I have ever seen him smile at any Alabama game. Maybe in a a candid interview like the one he gave ESPN on their bowl selection show. But he just looks like a robot programmed to destroy the world with his defense (which would be alright by me if I were a Tide fan strictly from a football perspective). But the whole relationship at Alabama just seems forced by big money, greed, and the need to meet overtly delusional Alabama fans’ quest for telling everybody how great they are. In a word Saban at Alabama just doesn’t look comfortable. (Calapari at UK looks eerily similar).
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Eh, I think guys like Urban Meyer and Nick Saban are misunderstood. We think it’s weird that football consumes every fiber of their being. They probably think we’re weird for not being just like them.
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I don’t remember Bear Bryant smiling much either, though. Probably for the same reasons.
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Bear had it a helluva lot easier than these guys. He could put 5QB’s and 10 RB’s on his roster, just to screw the rest of the SEC.
I’ve heard some good stories about Bear having whiskey breath on his Sunday shows.
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“ever seen him smile at any Alabama game’
i think i saw Nick smile at end of this year’s SECCG v. Florida but only when he knew that the dehydration of Urban was complete…
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Nice! Makes me smile just thinking about that.
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Nick is one unsmilingly tough hombre. A mere mortal would have sustained a separated shoulder or a dead shoulder like Colt had last night but all Nick got was a frog on his bicep of steel…
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Video-Tide-s-full-contact-victory-bath-has-disp;_ylt=A9G_XIlMm0dL_EkA4wo5nYcB?urn=ncaaf,212471
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Watching Bama on offense made me much happier about Bobo.
Yes, Texas had a good D, but Bama’s strenght is in the stable of runners. Yet McElroy was on 5 and 7 step drops looking downfield consistently in the first half.
Has McElroy been that Gawd awful at taking sacks all season? Mercy, he makes Cox look like Drew Brees. Also, did you hear he is from Texas and his dad works in football?
The Texas OC ought to be tarred and feathered for the shuffle pass before the half. He did a good job of finding things that worked in the second half, but that’s inexcusable.
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Um Shipley dropped at least 3 easy ones… He made some big plays yes, but I would call him good, not great
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“that stretch where the officials blew call after call after call was brutal” but just for Texas. The SEC loves Big East officiating crews!
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1. Sorry, they have not EARNED the right to be called national champs, no one ever has. Congrats to Bama for winning the BCS title, but special congrats for being the SEC Champs, the highest honor that can be earned in CFB. Bama, best of the best in 2009.
2. I don’t know if Texas meant that as an outside kick, but I have often wondered why that isn’t tried more often. Even if you miss the receiving players on the front line, that kick is difficult to handle and often rolls deep. Given the low percentage of successful onside kick attempts, I like the idea of having my kicker take a little “sniper” training for special occasions.
3. How does Tiffin get rated above Walsh? With very little wind, Tiffin misses a FG attempt that was never on line, chokes one extra point, and almost misses another.
4. I was very surprised with Bama’s 2nd half play calling against a defense they had gouged in the first half. This was way too conservative for that point of the game. Without the fumble inside the ten yardline at the end of the game, I think Bama gets shut out in the 2nd half. Yet, Saban chooses to score a meaningless TD at the end of the game when he could have taken a knee. Go figure.
5. Saddest day of the year for me, 7-8 months before the next CFB game. The silly season is upon us. For me, I hope we do not hire Kirby Smart this week, just too much disruption for me given his almost “rock star” status. This would be a “fly by” for UGA ata time we need someone to come in, roll up his sleeves, and build a solid product that can compete for SEC titles the next two years.
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‘Bama won the SEC the same way it won the BCS title game, didn’t it, by winning a one-game playoff?
And if you’re going to get into “settling it on the field”, neither school played every team in the conference.
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You make the most valid point of all, Senator. To be a true conference champion a team should play ALL the teams in its conference. The way the PAC-10 does it is best. But that eliminates the conference championship game and all the $$ that can be had.
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heh, heh…. point for the Senator- they CAN be called SEC Champions but they can NOT be called National Champions because…… heh, heh, heh.
I’ll have another sip of fine single malt scotch and think about that one.
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Preposterous to state you have to beat EVERY challenger in order to claim a legit title. The SEC title is legit because EACH representative in the two Divisions did EARN the right to be the representative. Under your thought process we would have to have a 120 team playoff, no one is proposing anything that insane as a solution, although the alarmists would have you think that it might expand to that. Conferences have the right to choose who represents them, the SEC, Big 12, ACC, and even the PAC 10 meet that criteria satisfactorily to me.
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It’s equally preposterous to state that Alabama doesn’t deserve to be called champion because they didn’t beat Florida, again, in a national playoff.
Playoffs wouldn’t settle everything anyway. As we saw, the ACC champion wasn’t better than the Big10 runner-up. Why should the inferior team be guaranteed entry to post season play over the superior team?
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When one views the entire season as a playoff the idea of a conference champion playing every other team in the conference makes sense. After a true conference champion is established the “playoff” between conference champions of whatever kind (beauty contest like the BCS or, alternatively, a tournament format) can proceed with a measure of credibility. But when the system does not even require a conference champion to play every other conference foe or ignores the results of games (like the BCS often does), that system is nonfunctional. That is at least as far as integrity is concerned. It can still function quite well as a cash cow, which is what we have presently with the SEC and the BCS.
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You’ve managed to turn my argument completely on its head.
I’m not the one trying to delegitimize a title here. You are.
And that’s what they’ve done with the BCS, too.
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A buddy of mine said that Herbie sounded like the narrator from MANswers.
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In case you missed it; Ingram’s father is serving time in prison. I just thought it was worth reiterating in case anyone missed that tidbit the first fifty times it was mentioned during the broadcast, or Heisman week, or seccg week, or every week the tide played on TV.
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ROFL.
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Since Nick Saban was Ingram’s father’s position coach in college what does that say about the quality of the life lessons one learns from Nick? Really makes me want my kid to play for him.
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