ESPN.com does a great job of breaking down the numbers on the Alabama defense and makes the case that this could be one of the best in college football history.
Win two more games and they can argue their case. Lose one of the next two and it won’t matter.
There have been lots of big plays in the Nick Saban era at Alabama, but perhaps none as big as Eryk Anders’ sack of Garrett Gilbert in the 2010 Rose Bowl. That win capped an undefeated season for the Tide and secured Saban’s first title at Alabama and the school’s 13th overall.
Alabama knocked Texas quarterback Colt McCoy out of the contest early and built a big lead. But true freshman Gilbert led a second half comeback and the Longhorns were only down three and had momentum and the football late in the fourth quarter. That’s when Anders showed up huge, knocking the ball free from Gilbert and setting up a recovery by Courtney Upshaw.
In case you missed it, you can catch the entire CBS broadcast — sans commercials — in the video below. Roll Tide.
Three and counting for the Tide over Auburn. I’ll take 100 more. There’s a nice highlight video below.
I didn’t watch the Alabama – LSU game Saturday night, so the clip below came in handy when curiosity got the better of me today.
This is much better than spending four hours or more on a Saturday watching a game.
After you lose twice in a row to a team like Ole Miss, you tend to not like that team very much and you don’t want to lose a third in a row to them.
Thankfully, Alabama put an end to the Rebels’ two-game win streak by delivering a 48-43 win last Saturday.
Overall, this game did not include my best performance as a fan. Down 24-3 in the first half, things were looking bleak. And then the referees stepped in the spotlight. The play below where an Ole Miss defender ear-holes Bama quarterback Jalen Hurts highlights the ineptitude of this crew.
As is obvious from the clip, the Rebel defender “targeted” Hurts. A penalty should have been called, the defensive player should have been ejected and Alabama should have proceeded along with their drive. But nope. The refs didn’t see it. They also missed a holding foul that occurred prior to the touchdown being scored — which should have also ended the play — and they the crew failed to clean up the mess via replay. Ah, life at the hands of referees.
Thankfully, though, this series of unfortunate events seemed to bring life back to our boys. They proceeded to go on a 45-6 scoring binge before allowing a few points during Ole Miss’ futile comeback attempt.
This picture was taken before last Saturday’s game between Alabama and Western Kentucky. The Tide won this tilt 38-10 in very un-fall-like weather that felt like 97 degrees to the average fan, but probably felt like 130 to the players.
“Friday Picture” is a weekly blog series about life…one picture at a time. You can read all of the posts in the series by clicking here.
The college football world billed this past weekend as the “best opening weekend” ever and while, that may or may not be factually true, it was pretty darn good.
To me, the best part of the weekend was obviously Alabama’s 52-6 demolition of Southern California.
The next best part was Clemson’s win over Auburn.
However, the most entertaining game was most likely Texas’ 50-47 win over Notre Dame. And speaking of that, check out Eq St. Brown’s somersault catch into the end zone. This is amazing.
After only one game in, LSU fans already have their hopes dashed and the late hit below put an exclamation point on a bad weekend for Les Miles.
The football was good. There was lots of it and the games were indeed really good. The best part, though, was being with Sweet Wife, the kids and Sweet Wife’s parents for a nice relaxing weekend fill with good conversation, good food and love.
There are several days each year that I look forward to more than others. Today is one of them. College football is back.
Yeah, yeah. I know there have been some games already like some game Cal played in Australia. But today is the real thing. By my count, there are at least 16 games kicking off tonight, including openers for SEC teams South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
The most important game of any on this opening weekend is, of course, Alabama’s contest against Southern California in Texas. When we last saw the Tide, they were outlasting Clemson 45-40 in the national championship game on their way to their 16th national championship.
Is this the year for number 17? Some folks think so as many of polls have the Tide ranked first to start the season. In my opinion they are sort of a default pick. They are the defending champions, they always seem to play well, and they’re as good on paper as any of the other tops teams, so they sort of slide into the top pick.
My pick? Well, though I would love for the Tide to win it all again, I’d have to guess the winner will be Clemson. They have arguably the best player in Deshaun Watson and they have a chip on their shoulder after losing to Alabama last year. At this point, the Tide has too many question marks up the middle — center, quarterback and tailback — to think they can repeat.
It’s here. The games are back. January will be here before we know it.
It’s been a long week (already), a long month (already) and a long year (already). But, just a few short months ago, Alabama squared off against Clemson in the College Football Playoff out in Arizona.
Life has been so hectic since then that there has been very little time to savor Alabama’s win. However, I took a few short minutes this week to do so. I punched “Alabama Clemson” (or something like that) into the YouTube and the video above appeared.
This isn’t my favorite Alabama win for a national championship — that would be the win where I met Sweet Wife — but it was an absolutely fantastic game. The last 10 minutes of the game were especially entertaining. Of course, they weren’t “especially entertaining” back on January 11th. No, the last 10 minutes were excruciating and seemed to last forever.
Anyways, there’s a lot about sports — and college football in particular — that aren’t fun to think about, but games like this sure do cover over a lot of grime and make you start counting the days until the next kickoff. Enjoy the encouragement.
Husband Father Son 