You cannot tell me that if you swapped out FSU’s garnet and gold for Bama’s crimson and white that the wins away from home over Florida and Louisville wouldn’t be suddenly considered the gutty, gritty overcoming of adversity. That Nick Saban wouldn’t be hailed as a resourceful leader of men who found a way to get his team across the finish line unblemished.
Hell, if it had been Bama playing with its 3rd-string QB and the other team was LSU, suddenly that 16-6 slogfest would be considered one of the great old-school defensive struggles of the modern era, the way football ought to be played.
It’s this simple: the committee members were terrified of crossing the SEC. And Saban. And Greg Sankey. And Paul Feinbaum. And Laura Rutledge’s makeup. And the whole lot of Disney’s SEC-aligned cabal. They were never, ever doing that.
And that sucks.
2. Thank heavens no more of the 4-team bracket.
It should have and could have been a 12-team tournament this year instead of next. The fact that the 4-team model existed only when 5 power conferences existed and now vanishes the moment the Pac-12 dissolves is ironic enough. As soon as they don’t desperately need more than four slots with the Pac-12′s demise and now only four major conferences, then they expand the Playoff threefold.
Sure, the arguments over #12 and #13 will be lively in the future. But they’ll be much more muted, in the same way pundits momentarily consider who’s snubbed from the NCAA basketball bracket and then quickly move on.
It’ll be a different sort of obsequiousness from the committee next year when some 9-3 SEC team gets in over a more deserving lesser-conference outfit. But at least it can’t be this egregious again.
3. Florida State’s exclusion is also a shot over the ACC’s bow.
This wasn’t merely a snubbing of the unbeaten Seminoles in favor of once-beaten Alabama. This was a repudiation of the Atlantic Coast Conference as a whole in a way that cannot be mistaken. It’s as if the bulk of the committee members rejected the idea of the ACC as a power conference altogether.
And that is akin to telling its strongest members: Look, you’re in a rinky-dink league. As soon as your lawyers manage to locate a legal loophole in the ACC’s grant of rights – that is, a manageable buyout – better evacuate for the SEC or B1G as soon as you can.
Florida State and Clemson both reportedly examined jumping from the ACC last year, but couldn’t get it done. FSU’s spurning by the CFP after a 13-0 season must send the message: Your conference schedule isn’t good enough.
4. Nick Saban is a Michigan antagonist from way back.
It’s hard to remember now, but Bama’s boss is a West Virginia boy who cut his coaching teeth despising Michigan in various degrees.
Saban played, then coached at Kent State (1970-76), he coached the secondary for Earle Bruce at Ohio State (1980-81), he was secondary coach and then DC for George Perles at Michigan State (1983-87), he was head coach just across the Michigan border at Toledo (1990), he worked on Bill Belichick’s staff with the Cleveland Browns (1991-94), and finally was head coach at Michigan State (1995-99).
That’s two decades of Ohio- and Michigan-based rivalry with the maize and blue. Though he’d never admit it openly, Saban has been bred to loathe the Wolverines. He coached at MSU directly against Jim Harbaugh as the U-of-M quarterback. The MSU teams he head-coached went 2-3 against Lloyd Carr but won the first and last games of that span in the late ‘90s. That included a memorable 34-31 upset of the #3-ranked Wolverines in Spartan Stadium in 1999 that really put Saban on the national map and made him attractive to LSU which lured him away a month later.
This game is not the first time Saban and Harbaugh have faced off as head coaches. They met in the post-1999 Citrus Bowl with the #9-ranked Tide easily covering the -7 spread by a 35-16 count over the #17-ranked Wolverines.
But it will be the first time anything of substance has been on the line. This is not one of Saban’s better Alabama teams by any stretch. It very possibly is Harbaugh’s best team as a college coach, either at Michigan or Stanford. And a spot in the CFP championship is at stake.
5. Steve Sarkisian vs. Washington will motivate many at U-Dub.
This is nothing like Saban’s underlying animosity for Michigan. But there are some who resent the fact that Sark used Washington as a steppingstone simply to return to Southern California – where he ultimately met a self-inflicted demise.
Credit to Sarkisian for overcoming his alcoholism, recentering himself under Saban at Alabama and then making the most of the opportunity at Texas when he got another shot. Some also say he deserves undue credit for rebuilding UW football from scratch after the Tyrone Willingham disaster.
But just when he got the Huskies back in contention, Sarkisian bolted for USC and became the first UW coach to move on to a bigger venue since 1956 – when Darrell Royal moved to… none other than Texas. Those are the folks who laud Don James’ loyalty, even when pursued by Ohio State in 1987 to come home to Ohio.
Sark wasn’t polished like the distinguished James, had a bit of huckster vibe to him. He’s notorious in some Seattle quarters for showing up at James’ funeral in practice gear and then launching to a speech that sounded more like a pep rally than a eulogy.
Anyway, this is hardly the first time Washington and Sarkisian have been reunited. The Huskies and their old head coach met this time last season under much less pressure – in the Alamo Bowl, where Washington prevailed 27-20. This time, at the Superdome in New Orleans, Sark and UW’s current coach Kalen DeBoer will have just a smidge more scrutiny
