You may have thought whether we’ve reached the end of the ‘Bama dynasty run is something of a here and now question, but Mr. Evans is here to tell us that particular horse left the barn a few seasons ago.
… Alabama is a very good team, occasionally even piecing together dominant teams, dominant games, and — in one memorable 2020 — an entire dominant season.
But the time of figuring on winning the Big Game are over.
Alabama required an SECCG game of their life to even advance to the playoffs 2021 — and then lost a rematch; it did not do so in 2022; defensive collapses and injuries cost ‘Bama a chance in 2019 and a title 2016; in 2018 team-wide coaching dysfunction slayed them…Two titles in seven years is modest by “dynasty” standards, and yet, in three of those playoffs, Georgia has taken two of them. Clemson has pocketed two more.
Alabama is “just” another elite team. The dynasty occurred in 2009-2015.
Gee, I wonder what happened after 2015.
Anyway, he’s certainly lowered his expectations for the coming season.
We can begin by adjusting them this year — I am. I think clinching the West will be a good year; winning the SEC and/or making the playoffs will be wildly exceeding expectations; and anything beyond that is deranged optimism and taking Saban into COTY territory.
Somebody got a Kleenex they can pass him? Sounds like he needs one.
Get The Picture 
Could not happen to a nicer bunch.
Will leave the rest to RR
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Mr Jim, I’m no Bama fan. Saying that, I’d like to see the Tide run roughshod over the SECW. Piss on Jimbo, Kelly and Joey Freshwater and their teams. That will give the Dawgs the opportunity to beat Bama like crimson headed stepchildren and send Sabanocchio back to Tuscaloosa wearing a torn dress and sucking on a bottle of bourbon like SOS.
Suck it, Gumps.
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The shittier bammer gets the less we’ll need that validation. As much as I’d love to beat bama down at mbs, I’d take them finishing 3rd in the west with the same joy.
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Exactly…. And maybe they are not playing as well but nobody can deny their talent levels. Even Kirby is only 1-4 against them.
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“crimson headed stepchildren”
Golf clap from an Augusta native. 👏👏👏 Excellent work, my friend.
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Oh, he’s such an insider analyst! I’m so impressed! Where can I buy his tout sheet and some kratom?
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They have a ‘Poll’ at the end of the article – I am really enjoying all of this a little too much.. 🙂
Poll
Is the “dynasty” dead?
9%
Yes, and it died a few years ago
(71 votes)
16%
If not, it’s awfully close.
(131 votes)
44%
The margin for error is a lot smaller now but it’s not dead per se. The landscape is just more competitive.
(355 votes)
13%
Nope. This team just needs some good injury luck and key recruiting to pan out, none of which it really had the last several years.
(107 votes)
17%
TRUST THE PROCESS, ALWAYS!
(136 votes)
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A 2023 Bama team finishing 9-3 would be pretty incredible to see. Xanax sales in Gadsen would skyrocket and Boaz would burn.
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If they go 9-3, come in second in the West and we Three Peat, they will still cling to the “Kirby is 1-4 against Nick” meme.
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So – does this mean that we are to be deprived of his who-is-good-enough-to-be-second-behind-Bama rating that he has been issuing that past few years? I fondly remember the #2 that he awarded to Iowa year before last after the Dawgs dissected Arkansas or Auburn (I forget which). The new Erik seems flat and sour compared to the old Erique with his daffy eriquiousness.
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[….one memorable 2020 — an entire dominant season….]
The season when no Team played in front of many fans, players were opting out of teams left & right and the season was shortened by 2 games? Yea little bit of a stretch for that **asterisk championship.
The ship is sinking and Bama nation is still in the crow’s nest watching the sunset.
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Despite those 2020 conditions Alabama won 11 consecutive SEC games then 2 playoff games.
Alabama’s total margin of victory in those 11 games against SEC teams was 333 points. The averaged a 30.3 point victory in 11 games against SEC teams, none of which were Vanderbilt. Alabama’s margin of victories in the CFP was 45 points in 2 games.
That is one hell of an accomplishment and Alabama suffered the same pandemic restrictions all other SEC teams faced.
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At times Bama seemed like the only team taking 2020 seriously. I thought it was Saban’s best coaching job. That team was LOCKED in.
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That was a really good Georgia team that they destroyed.
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Yes, it was, and we led at halftime.
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Hard to know…the landscape of CFB and the mindset of the world was in the gutter in 2020, maybe that year was the last stand-off their stockpiled talent, which carried them despite all the other factors. Either way bamas program is not who they used to be anymore and we can put them away forever by winning a threepeat.
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I gotta say I’m glad that year wasn’t one of our Natty years. It would have gone from “1980” to “2020”.
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… Is Alabama chasing Georgia now — or just on par?…
As a Dawg fan did you ever think you would live long enough to see this?
Damn, just Damn. GO DAWGS
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“Saban deserves COTY honors for making the playoff at Bama in 2023” is the big brain meme where they guy is sitting on a throne of brain, playing a game of chess against an opponent made up of his own brain. It’s legitimately fascinatingly on a psychological level how these obsessive tie themselves in knots for reasons I still can’t quite figure out.
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First, I don’t believe Erik’s shit for a second. He’s using the childish reverse psychology to try to will Bama into winning the SEC and getting into the playoffs.
Second, I hesitate to even take a trip over to RBR, but I wonder how they are faring with the potential points shaving accusations in baseball?
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Lol. From Erik himself today:
Alabama Athletics in 2023 has been a reverse Midas touch of misery. Almost everything the Tide has touched has turned to shit. Multiple arrests of recruits and athletes, under-performance in key sports, dilatory administrative responses to PR disasters, one player involved in a capital murder, and on and on and on.
Add one more to the pile of misery.
[B]ut man, I’m ready to end everything for 2022-2023. What a miserable year for athletics…and another reputational black eye for my alma mater.
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Erik Evans… figured it out? Wow. Will wonders never cease?
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Eric with a K and a smoke shop haz a sad.
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Grind this up and inject it between my toes.
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After reading that, I also need a Kleenex but not for my nose.
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Erik Evans is the poster child for Johnny come lately Alabama fans who have a completely warped view of their place in college football directly as a result of sabans literally unprecedented run of being that elite for that long (15 years). As in these guys don’t understand what saban did will probably never happen again and sports is like world history in that everyone is jostling for power at all times and thus nobody stays on top forever. It was a great run they (they being the fan base, not saban) got to enjoy purely by chance and they should savor what they had not view it as their permanent birthright.
This guy was 100% certain Kirby could never beat Alabama right up until kickoff of the national championship game. Then preseason 2022, he was convinced Alabama was gonna go on a revenge tour. Then Alabama has an off year (by their standards, let’s face it any sec team not georgia would have been ecstatic about 2 narrow losses and a sugar bowl win) and his conclusion isn’t that other teams are good but that the only reason other teams are experiencing success is because Alabama is just not performing at the level god ordained them to play to for all time so the playoff committee had no choice but to throw in 4 sloppy seconds into the playoff….and sec championship game.
This is what unwarranted arrogance and delusion in one’s self appointed special place in the world looks like.
I can’t believe I gave a shred of legitimacy to EriK by rebutting him.
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Very well said, CD.
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You nailed it.
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Exactly so. It is really funny to look at Erique’s and other Bamoids’ predictions, i.e. threats of a year ago, that the Dawgs were about to face some boogeyman variously called Revengeabama, AngryBama, or the humbler HungryBama. Too bad that our guys didn’t get the opportunity to trash them twice in a row in last year’s post-season, but hopefully that occasion will present itself this next. Till then, M&W waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
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You nailed it. Erik’s attitude is that if Alabama’s not good in a given season, that just means nobody is, and any national titles will be illegitimate until the Tide rises up to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs. Fuck that noise.
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I never understood how Bama could go on a “Revenge Tour” in 2022 when they only lost 2 games in 2021 (and the last one in the National Championship game). That in itself reveals the entitlement mindset of the typical Bama fan.
Of course I also remember after Clemson throttled Bama 44-16 for the 2018 Natty that the Bama fans on Finebaum were calling for St. Nick’s head. It was as if Saban was the worst coach that ever lived. They wanted him gone. Bama went 14-1 in 2018 and they wanted him gone. What morons.
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It won’t be long before all the Bama-fanboy Kirby haters start a campaign to bring him “home.” Trouble is, Kirby’s been home since 2016. No coach in their right mind would want to follow Saban, either. The decline will be glorious to watch.
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Kirby ain’t leaving Athens because Mary Beth has made it clear she isn’t leaving their home in Five Points and how convenient Athens is to their place on Oconee.
The only way Kirby leaves Athens would be if he ever got the NFL itch to scratch, and I would think that wouldn’t happen until the Smart kiddos are out of school.
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Here’s hoping Mary Beth never wants to leave, and if Kirby does get an itch she’s got some super-strong cortisone creme to fix that right quick.
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Personally it would not surprise me even a little if Kirby goes to the NFL in the next five years. Especially if the Dawgs win another natty in the next few years. If he could take over a good situation, he would be gunning for short list of all time greatest coaches. Saban is the GOAT in college, but with a Super Bowl Kirby would be the fourth coach to win a natty and a SB (Pete Carroll [2x natty, 1x SB], Barry Switzer [3x natty, 1 SB], and Jimmy Johnson [1x natty, 2x SB]). And that list is never going to include Saban.
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This, successful people are almost always ambitious and looking to the next summit and world to conquer, that’s just how they’re wired and that’s what makes them successful. I don’t know Mary Beth and Kirby from Adam but if they’re like most power couples I know, the spouse is just as much a part of the success as they guy or gal in the headlines, he or she just operates behind the scenes but they are just as much ambitious and power hungry as their spouse. (I don’t mean that in a bad way).
Put another way if Kirby has NFL ambitions, Mary Beth is more likely to have NFL ambitions too than wanting Kirby to “stay home” in Athens, however much they may love their alma mater.
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Why would he do that? He can make as much money and control every bit of the football operation (he isn’t getting that in Atlanta or Charlotte for example). Almost every national coaching record except possibly career wins is in reach if he decides he wants it. He saw what the Miami experience did to his mentor. Being successful also means knowing your limitations and what plays to your strengths. He has his dream job and is damn successful at it. Why go somewhere else?
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I’m not sure Kirby would do it. He seems to enjoy the recruiting and the teaching. He has total control over the football program. I don’t know if Switzer was an OU grad (also, can’t remember if he left OU for the Dallas job). The others listed including Saban were mercenaries at their colleges as opposed to Kirby, who has said this job is the one he always wanted.
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Switzer played at Arkansas under Frank Broyles.
After Georgia and Oklahoma won the court case that opened college football tv rights up, the NCAA “coincidently” mounted in-depth investigations of the UGA and Oklahoma football programs. They got UGA on a single violation that even the NCAA admitted no one on the staff or at the school knew about, but none-the-less hammered UGA by taking away a bunch of scholarships.
The Oklahoma investigation opened a can of worms the like of which was not seen again until the SMU death penalty. The lowlights included a player trying to buy cocaine from FBI agents, one booster paying 100-150 players, and the OU recruiting coordinator running a ticket scalping ring with players. Switzer resigned before he could be fired in 1989.
He wasn’t hired by the Cowboys (or anyone else, as far as I know) until 1994.
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Switzer’s program was so rogue that it made the NCAA re-think rules about athletics only housing. In addition to Charles Thompson selling 17 grams of coke to the FBI while in the dorm. Three players were accused of rape and one teammate shot another teammate after an argument.
A few years earlier, Switzer beat insider trading charges. He just conveniently found himself sitting behind some corporate insiders discussing “bidness” while sitting in the bleachers at his son’s high school track meet.
Switzer resigned in 1989 and was out of football for 5 years before his former teammate, Jerry Jones, called him to coach the Cowboys as replacement for Jimmy Johnson.
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Another old-school person who remembers all this I see. Everything you said is the way I remember it, so you’re either right on or we’re both senile 😄
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Us younger dawgs like to read this. Thanks for the history lessons. All I remember is my 49ers had some problems with the cowboys.
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Five Points keeps getting bigger.
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Erik with a K making sense. When will wonders ever cease?
They miss Kirby more than they will ever admit.
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I don’t know about that. I’ve talked with several Bama fans who are very sensible, everyone of them says the same thing, Kirby was a very important part of that dynasty and all of them would take him back in an instant. We ain’t giving him back tho!!
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Maybe Nick would like to come work for Kirby?
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Wouldn’t THAT be interesting?
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The Saban era at Alabama absolutely can be divided into 2 distinct sub-eras split by Kirby’s departure. The post-Kirby part of Saban’s reign was fueled by generational QB/WR play that now seems unsustainable. Elite defense (at least the kind Kirby is capable of) looks more sustainable because he’s been doing since the late 2000s: at Alabama and now UGA.
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I’ll be long dead and buried before the Gumps stop talking about the injuries to Metchie and Williams.
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By that time, the Gumps will have just added 2021 to their long list of “claimed” national titles.
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The same applies to THE Ohio State fans about Marvin Harrison, Jr. in the Peach Bowl.
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I was going to make this comment yesterday on one of the threads but at I see the current state of Alabama/Saban having some parallels of Duke BB/Coach K after their last championship in 2015.
Almost every year after that last championship, Duke and Coach K still brought in top recruits, sent players to the NBA, and were in the mix for the NC. They really only got close one last time but Coach K was still the “standard” in the sport.
I think Saban and Alabama will be the same as long as he wants to keep coaching. They will be in the mix but domination year over year isn’t likely to happen.
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“Deranged optimism.” Erik coined a great phrase there. And it’s coming out of the damn woodwork in Alabama, always does. I lived amongst it for 10 years. Pawwwwwwwl!
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This is what it’s like to be humbled by one Honky McFailson.
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I had EE pegged as one of those 2005-2010 graduates who was recruited from Maryland or someplace.
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Between time at LSU, Bama, and UGA, just how many National Championship rings does Kirby have?
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I think he needs a shirt that says, ” Ring for the ding-a-ling” to inspire him for the next one.
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Since Kirby left Tuscaloosa they have the B1G officiating title of 2017 and the 2020 Covid title. Two asterisks.
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