There's no avoiding it anymore. The feeling is palpable through the long summer months of the offseason: Alabama Fatigue has set in.
It's the kind of thing that's bound to happen when you get May stories about a shattered crystal football selling for $105,000 at an auction. Yes, Alabama sells its broken scraps for cash, while schools like Ole Miss have to pretend they have real ones.
There is no cure for Alabama Fatigue, because the 2013 BCS National Championship Game was every bit as ridiculous as you remember it; Alabama dominated the NFL draft; and despite the latter, the Crimson Tide will be the overwhelming favorites to repeat the former in January 2014, aiming for a fourth championship in five seasons. One broken crystal football doesn't matter much when you could fill a warehouse with the trophies you've already won.
Everyone's sick of this, tired of the hype, tired of the success spearheaded by a man some might call the devil, a man who also happens to be one of the best coaches to ever pace a college football sideline. It's easy to throw stones from far away, calling Alabama and/or the SEC overrated, ignoring the three national titles, the top-ranked recruiting classes, the BCS blowouts, and foolishly pretending that your team would handle Alabama in a hypothetical matchup. It's one thing to claim victory in hypothetical. It's another for someone to actually dethrone the Tide.
So the question everybody wants an answer to is this: When will it end?
But there's a better question, for non-LSU/Auburn fans anyway: Why should we wish it away?
***
The most memorable sports eras are defined by dominant teams or individuals. The goal is the existence of a headliner, but not one so strong that nobody else can compete. It's acceptable to watch Alabama glide through eight or nine games per season with ease when we know there will still be three or four prizefights along the way.
The mark of a great team is not only what it does in big games, of course. It's what it does against the also-rans, leaving no doubt and proving superiority without blinking an eye. Looking back at the national title game against Notre Dame, anybody could guess which team won all its games against unranked opponents by several touchdowns, and which team needed three overtimes to beat Pitt and barely escaped BYU and Purdue.
Only three times in 14 games last season was the outcome ever even in doubt, but they were worth it. The Crimson Tide were burned by a great second half from LSU QB Zach Mettenberger, but A.J. McCarron overcame struggles to put together a brilliant game-winning drive in Death Valley. The next week, at home against Texas A&M, Johnny Manziel spent a quarter acting as the grain of sand in the Alabama microchip, throwing The Process out of whack, because it's nearly impossible to prepare for everything Manziel can do, especially given that at that time we still weren't fully aware of his talent until, say, this moment
Then, in December, Alabama edged Georgia in one of the most memorable SEC title games ever.
I could watch that Alabama-Georgia game 100 times and not get tired of it. It may have been the best all-around college football game since the USC-Texas 2006 Rose Bowl, which may be the best game ever played. Alabama found a worthy adversary in a peaking Georgia team that, on a basic level, played similar football: brilliant running, efficient passing and strong, athletic playmakers on defense. They traded haymakers for three and a half hours in a de facto national semifinal, and with five more seconds, Georgia might have won and might still be celebrating its national championship win over Notre Dame.
But the Bulldogs ran out of time, and Alabama went to Miami to cement its place among the great dynasties of college football.
Matt Brown
It's the kind of thing that's bound to happen when you get May stories about a shattered crystal football selling for $105,000 at an auction. Yes, Alabama sells its broken scraps for cash, while schools like Ole Miss have to pretend they have real ones.
There is no cure for Alabama Fatigue, because the 2013 BCS National Championship Game was every bit as ridiculous as you remember it; Alabama dominated the NFL draft; and despite the latter, the Crimson Tide will be the overwhelming favorites to repeat the former in January 2014, aiming for a fourth championship in five seasons. One broken crystal football doesn't matter much when you could fill a warehouse with the trophies you've already won.
Everyone's sick of this, tired of the hype, tired of the success spearheaded by a man some might call the devil, a man who also happens to be one of the best coaches to ever pace a college football sideline. It's easy to throw stones from far away, calling Alabama and/or the SEC overrated, ignoring the three national titles, the top-ranked recruiting classes, the BCS blowouts, and foolishly pretending that your team would handle Alabama in a hypothetical matchup. It's one thing to claim victory in hypothetical. It's another for someone to actually dethrone the Tide.
So the question everybody wants an answer to is this: When will it end?
But there's a better question, for non-LSU/Auburn fans anyway: Why should we wish it away?
***
The most memorable sports eras are defined by dominant teams or individuals. The goal is the existence of a headliner, but not one so strong that nobody else can compete. It's acceptable to watch Alabama glide through eight or nine games per season with ease when we know there will still be three or four prizefights along the way.
The mark of a great team is not only what it does in big games, of course. It's what it does against the also-rans, leaving no doubt and proving superiority without blinking an eye. Looking back at the national title game against Notre Dame, anybody could guess which team won all its games against unranked opponents by several touchdowns, and which team needed three overtimes to beat Pitt and barely escaped BYU and Purdue.
Only three times in 14 games last season was the outcome ever even in doubt, but they were worth it. The Crimson Tide were burned by a great second half from LSU QB Zach Mettenberger, but A.J. McCarron overcame struggles to put together a brilliant game-winning drive in Death Valley. The next week, at home against Texas A&M, Johnny Manziel spent a quarter acting as the grain of sand in the Alabama microchip, throwing The Process out of whack, because it's nearly impossible to prepare for everything Manziel can do, especially given that at that time we still weren't fully aware of his talent until, say, this moment
Then, in December, Alabama edged Georgia in one of the most memorable SEC title games ever.
I could watch that Alabama-Georgia game 100 times and not get tired of it. It may have been the best all-around college football game since the USC-Texas 2006 Rose Bowl, which may be the best game ever played. Alabama found a worthy adversary in a peaking Georgia team that, on a basic level, played similar football: brilliant running, efficient passing and strong, athletic playmakers on defense. They traded haymakers for three and a half hours in a de facto national semifinal, and with five more seconds, Georgia might have won and might still be celebrating its national championship win over Notre Dame.
But the Bulldogs ran out of time, and Alabama went to Miami to cement its place among the great dynasties of college football.
Matt Brown
