BCS Title Game Precap

by Big Al

Well, here we are. It's the BCS National Championship game. If you are as excited as me about this game, you can't wait to catch the last 15 minutes or so.

I realize it's going to be a great and important game, but I just can't seem to get excited about it. The game lacks any interesting storylines created by intersectional matchups, or any discussion of the superiority of one style of football or another, as both teams play exactly the same game: excellent defense and good-enough offense. Most of the players come from the essentially same small area of the country within the same region of the country, so there is really not even any significant interest generated by local pride.

However, there are a few interesting storylines to me, but that is only because of my particular expectations of future events. Thus, my interest in this game is entirely based upon contingencies.

The Past

I have long been an admirer of SEC football, as it has a pronounced concentration of football excellence. The players in the league are fast and hit hard. The players are usually quite fundamentally sound, but they are not boring in their emphasis on fundamentals. Their teams usually run a pretty vanilla gameplan, but they can execute their gameplans with remarkable skill and efficiency.

However, most of the teams in the SEC had a problem. That problem was Alabama. Alabama was the colossus that kept the villagers from venturing out. Alabama had all the players and all the resources, which allowed them to get all the conference titles. In the top level of football, only USC in the old Pac-10 stood so singularly above the rest of their conference peers. Perhaps also Texas in the old SWC, but I'm not going to split hairs here.

So, when Alabama is taking all the players and winning all the titles, it's pretty well impossible for the rest of the conference to get ahead. Or it was.

The Recent Past

In the last couple of decades, Alabama got hit hard with penalties and sanctions by the NCAA, leaving them very weakened. That opened the door for the rest of the SEC. Especially when a lot of the kids who were coming up as high school seniors had never seen Alabama be good and had no emotional attachment to them.

For the rest of the SEC, that meant that there was a window of opportunity opening for them. And that meant that they needed to win some conference (and national) titles while they were available.

It took some time, but oh boy did the rest of the conference take advantage. Tennessee, Florida, LSU, and Auburn all grabbed some national rings while the Tide was out. The conference race was one of the best in the country as it was up for grabs every year. The power structure shifted so much that you couldn't say that there was any structure at all. And it meant that the players fought like lions in every game, knowing that every game mattered. And so, the lions ruled while the dragon slept.

The Dragon has Awakened

As Alabama returned to prominence, the large number of Alabama fans throughout the South came back to support their team and its return. That means that the Tide is rolling back in and so are the recruits. And that may mean that the window is closing for the rest of the SEC.

While I never consider anything to be an absolute guaranteed lock to happen in the future, it seems that the rest of the SEC is fading as Alabama glows more brightly. Florida has hit hard times. Auburn turned in a stale year. Georgia was good, but stuck in the doldrums for the first part of the year. South Carolina hit a rough patch. Tennessee has been missing for years. Arkansas actually had an excellent team, but they were overshadowed into obscurity. And the rest of the SEC was their usual, dud selves. Only the LSU Tigers stands against the Tide.

What I Expect

Knowing the history of the SEC, I have been expecting Alabama to return to prominence and shove the rest of the league back into minor powers. I sometimes forgot that the mechanisms involved often take their own, sweet time about it, as the rest of the league was not going to just roll over and give up their corner offices just because the old boss is yelling that he needs them all for himself. Dammit, they did just fine taking care of the shop while the boss was away, so why on earth should they give up their control?! They will not go easy.

But, if I am right, go they will. Slowly, perhaps geologically so, but inexorably. It will take more than a few sanctions to keep Alabama down.

The Present

LSU took the win against Alabama earlier this year. This was good news for the SEC, as a loss by LSU likely would have put a non-SEC team in the title game. LSU does not have the star power of Alabama, so they would have been easier to move to #3, behind Oklahoma State. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but that's the world I'm seeing from here.

But that means that Alabama gets a second chance. An undeserved chance, but a second chance nonetheless. That gives me a bad feeling. I think LSU is better than Alabama, but Alabama created a heck of a lot more scoring chances in their game against LSU, though an impressive interception and a bad kicker frittered them away. I doubt that Alabama will be so spendthrift a second time.

The Prediction

I predict that, if LSU wins, the SEC's battle to hold off Alabama's resurgence will last for about another 8-10 years. And if Alabama wins, I predict that the SEC's fade will speed up and it will only be another 3-5 years before Alabama is the only national contender in the conference.

I am having trouble making a pick in this game. The very insular nature of the game leaves me on the outside looking in. It's two teams from the same area playing a game in that area. LSU probably took a bus to the game, and Alabama could have done the same if it weren't the national title game.

On top of that, every season has a certain flavor to it and the national title game along with it. But I can't get the taste in my mouth here. It's like licking air.

So, with that in mind, I expect that one of the teams' defense will crack late and the game will be blown open for a pretty dull finish to a closely-fought game. Say, at about 8 minutes left, the wheels will come off for one team whose defense starts giving up points, and their unremarkable offense starts doing stupid stuff in an attempt to catch up, but that only makes things worse by forcing things against an excellent defense.

So, with that said, I'll pick Alabama to what I described above. To be more specific, I predict they will win 45-10. Yes, I even included a score in the bargain. What's more, the winning team (whichever one it is) will score 4 touchdowns in the last 8 minutes of the game.

How's that for a prediction? The one thing I'm least clear about is the winner.