“… If the players can stop being selfish and just basically hand themselves over to the team and be committed to the team and be committed to doing what coach … wants … ”
“Not doing the little things right. Not finishing across the line. All of it’s going to catch up eventually, and it did.”
“I wish we would have prepared more for the Auburn game,”… “I wish my teammates would have been a little more disciplined on defense and on offense. We killed ourselves with penalties. Some players weren’t doing their assignments.
“I just feel like we could have done better. It’s simple as that.”
Sounds familiar. Another offseason of regrets in Athens… wait, wut?
Get The Picture 
All that’s missing is a comment about special teams play.
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And the obligatory coach comment “I think our guys played hard today”
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Why college football dynasties are hard to maintain. Eventually incoming recruits get into the “Because….Alabama” mentality. They become the other side of the Bear’s discussion here; an 85 in ability playing down to a 75.
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Complacency is a hard thing to avoid.
I like that video. It’s gotta be early, say pre 1965.
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awesome clip and I agree with both you and rock’s point above. complacency is not the ONLY factor when dynasties end, but it is ALWAYS ONE of the factors.
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That’s probably about right because they started calling them Golden Flakes sometime after 1956
http://www.goldenflake.com/history.html
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I wish CMR would say something exactly like this to the team. I hope he already has.
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On the one hand it’s nice to see guys who bought into something and worked their tails off. On the other hand these guys are saying it was always somebody else on the team.
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Is there a problem with this statement?
“He only wants the best for his players, in all honesty. If the players can stop being selfish and just basically hand themselves over to the team and be committed to the team and be committed to doing what coach Saban wants … because all coach Saban wants to do is win.”
Or is it just me?
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There’s no problem at all with that statement. It’s coming from a player who succeeded at Alabama and won championships, so I imagine that his perspective on Nick Saban is a glowing one.
Also, to his last statement, I don’t think there’s any perspective at all that would lead anyone to conclude that Nick Saban wants to do anything other than win football games.
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The first sentence.
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He only wants the best for the top 85 on his roster. The other 35 or so, not so much.
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When they say DQ, they do not mean Dilly Bar
Paige sent a tweet on Thursday night in reaction to the news: “Being leftout is the worst feeling ever!! :(”
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2013/08/alabama_freshman_dl_darius_pai.html
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Paige, a four star, was recruited to Bama by Jeremy Pruitt. Maybe…….
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To some it looks like the players drank kool aid. To others, it looks like they bought into the Saban’s plan for success. If it works it’s great. If not it looks like coach manipulation.
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Richt has lost control of the Alabama program
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i usually find the usage of this phrase (and even the word meme) in attepmts at humor to be annoying and stupid, but honestly, that is SIMPLE and SPECTACULAR
ROTFLMAO
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Based on Sabin’s comments before the bowl game (which resonated with me), I wonder what the real motivator is within him: loving to win or hating to lose. Personally, I think the latter provides more impetus to work at a higher level.
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Nick Saban will burn out just like Urban Meyer did. Nobody can keep up that type of intensity for an extended period. Kind of looking forward to Alabama coming back o Earth just like Florida did. Might even be more of a precipitous drop as Florida has a more fertile recruiting ground. The only question is, who will be more disappointed when they come back down: Alabama fans, or Richt haters?
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I think this is a fantastic thread. Personally, I am not at all afraid to be out on a limb and say the Bama dynasty as we know it is OVER.
While arguably it was PROBABLY never as great as it appeared with 3 titles in 4 years (never mind that they needed losses by others to pave their way into the championship game 2 of those seasons and even in one of those seasons was one play away from watching us go to Miami), he has built a great football factory. Of this, there can be ABSOLUTELY no debate. how great, how ethical, etc.? we can all debate forever.
Back to my original point, most everyone here who has a few gray hair who has followed sports knows that dynasties in sports end. yes, there are franchises which have sustained excellence, but no dynasty has lasted forever. The funny thing is in my experience is that it at the point in which the dynasty seems MOST sustainable is when it begins to end. I would argue that point for Bama was the moment they walked off the field in Miami a year ago.
there are so many reasons why…let me take a stab at a few
1)Saban himself. When you start authoring the narrative about yourself that we only allow ourselves to celebrate this title for 24 or 48 hours or whatever nonsense he is feeding the media, the clock on the end of the run has begun. He is competitive, demanding, and process/detail oriented. We get it. ask yourselves this? what is the marginal value of the 5th or 6th title for him? he has already earned a spot in the mt rushmore of college football coaches. that is sealed. we can walk through the rockne, bryants, and bud wilkinson’s of the world to try to place him somewhere but I know its above paterno and bowden. perhaps if stays in the profession and does not win a title for 10 years and gets really hungry to “go out a winner”
2)the mindset of the incoming frosh. they show up and they assume they have joined the best team in college football. btw, the 2014 frosh at bama will be more “entitled” than the FSU frosh. 3 titles and a stupid FG return away from a shot at another count for more than the most recent title. additionally, while having all four and five star players mean that you have a LOT of raw talent. It may not lead to best culture. No doubt a HUGE majority of those 4/5 stars got to be rated that way because of they combined their inherent talent with great work ethic. that said, lets not kid ourselves, a LOT of these kids are immature, they are blessed with enough talent to standout amongst other high school kids but don’t have the demeanor to succeed when talent alone won’t carry them. I am just guessing but that means a smaller and smaller percentage of the class is coming in with a Richard Sherman-like chip on their shoulder to prove people wrong OR if you want a more user friendly reference a Chris Conley like drive and work ethic to succeed NO MATTER WHAT! it is inevitable. Saban can process all the kids he wants, but when the culture starts to change, it is hard to reverse.
3)coaching staff turnover – for better or worse, guys move on and guy get complacent. Heck, I was the president of the “hire kirby smart” committee, but on the margin, he is making $1.3 million a year. How hungry is he really? so he is working his tail for a great head coaching gig, but between now and then, he is living in high cotton. Eventually, you run out of Jeremy Pruitt’s to hire, and you hire Doug Nussmeier who just enough worse than Jim Mcelwain to cost you at the wrong time.
4)HUNH is a disaster for Bama football. It mutes two of their greatest advantages of depth and ability to prepare defenders to show one look but actually play it a different way.
5)here is a little secret…his schemes are not that advanced or complex. he is NOT a great game day coach and never has been. He has patented a formula for “minimizing the variables (reliance on a passing game, unpredictability on defense) which lead to losing” and as a result winning more than anyone else.
I am NOT saying that Bama is going 8-4 next year or that they can’t or won’t win another title. They might. they might not, but as far as I am concerned, their “stranglehold” on college football is OVER.
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I don’t know about stranglehold, but as long as ‘Bama keeps recruiting the way it has under Saban, it’s going to be in the title mix every year.
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i guess it depends on what we define as “in the mix” and how broad that designation is in a world with a 4 team playoff.
further, it also depends on what we mean by recruiting the way they have under Saban. see point 2 above. by definition their classes are now on paper “more talented” than their legendary 2008 incoming class, but they are also “more entitled”. in my experience following sports, eventually that catches up and it rarely rectifies itself by a program having to “return to its roots” and get hard working kids. FSU lost a decade on this from 2001-2011.
again, I am not suggesting that they are going to suddenly implode, but I firmly believe the best days are in the past not the future. (which i recognize is NOT saying that much when the past included 3 titles in a 4 year span!).
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Some really good stuff from mdcgtp and others in this thread.
As already mentioned, no dynasty last indefinitely. It’s just too tough to win a NC or Super Bowl for years on end. Sooner or later, thing begin to come apart a little bit, or things happen that prevent you from getting there.
In CF, it’s often chemistry or culture that cycles you down. It’s a very tough thing to control. Another thing is after you’ve been so successful, complacency sets in. Then there’s things outside your control that prevent you from getting there. It’s just tough.
I suspect, with Alabama, it’s mostly complacency (which is understandable), with a little bad chemistry mixed in. We’ll see how Saban handles it. It’s something that can spread and get away from a coach pretty quick, no question about it. We’ve all seen it happen.
One thing we know from reports .. Saban DOES see it. And that’s half the solution. So I suspect Alabama won’t fall too far.
~~~
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“Brand” and schedule will keep them in the playoff mix for several years to come (likely until Saban retires). But mdcgtp raises good points about decay that sets from within any dynasty. Additionally, things beyond Nicky’s and The Process’ control can happen…injuries, recruiting violations, internal scandal, etc. And while dealing with these issues, the SEC West is not going to sit still. The mindset is clearly shifting that those guys are “beatable”.
Mark Richt’s complacency is spreading!
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You probably aren’t that far out on a limb.
Statistically, it’s pretty darn hard to three peat and I’m sure four out of six is just about as rare.
Not a bad series of comments by you, though.
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Would it not be nice to hear that statement every third or fourth year from a player on the Dawgs roster after winning a SEC title or NC title or a 1 or 2 ranking? My take away, leadership can get you so far. There was some players on the ’13 Bama squad, but some checked out in the last 2 minutes at Auburn.
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What they say at Georgia. “It would be nice to have a good roster at the beginning of the season, but we always, always have a key player or two suspended…every damn year…why?”
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Not very fundamentally sound on defense. Words from Jordan Jenkins after Gator Bowl and Fisher’s observation of the Dawgs in 2013.
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Coaching turnover. See Auburn from 2012 to 2013. Good turnover.
Player assignment & discipline vs “dynasty”. Yep, player assignment and discpline on the little pass by Marshall to a receiver to split the Bama DBs for a tying TD. Did not happen. Not sure what a dynasty is, but player assignment, player discipline, focus on the play / coverage, well, that was teh difference to the BCS title game for Bama.
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@Mayor of Dawgtown 4:14 PM
“Paige, a four star, was recruited to Bama by Jeremy Pruitt. Maybe…….” we need to hire Darius’ coach from Foley who coincidentally used to coach at Hoover instead of Tracy Rocker
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The heart of sports is motivation. Players and coaches can take the smallest thing and fuel themselves for months.
In 2013, after beating A&M, the motivational tools were probably hard to find.
Winning three in a row is incredibly difficult. It hurts to get so close, but the others do tend to soothe a bit.
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