Just a great national championship game last night in Glendale between two real college football heavyweights as Alabama and Clemson went toe to toe. I love OU football, but let’s be serious, OU is not currently residing in that zip code. Ohio State maybe, but these were the best two teams and they delievered the goods.
Derrick Henry may have won the Heisman, but he wasn’t the best player on the field last night–Deshaun Watson was that player. Great college football game. Everything you’d want in a game and some poignant post game interviews with Jake Coker, Adam Griffin (Bama kicker), and even the usually prickish Nick Saban.
Saban wins his fifth national championship and easily becomes the greatest college football coach of all-time because he’s doing this in an age of college football where there’s scholarship limitations, conference realignment, and parity otherwise blanketing the college football landscape.
What Saban is showing is that this isn’t an SEC thing, but a Saban thing at Alabama because the rest of the SEC has fallen back in line with the rest of the nation, but not Alabama with Saban.
People on the outside looking in may not like him, but every player last night basically talked of their love and respect for their coach. Does he have better players than the other coaches? Yeah, probably, but that’s a major part of being an elite DI college football coach…recruiting. Does the name Barry Switzer ring a bell?
Lots of comparisons last night between Vince Young in 2005-06 and Deshaun Watson this season. Personally, I think Watson is a much better player than Young because of his head and his arm. But that’s just me.
Anyway, that Texas win over USC was the last time a Big 12 team won a football national championship. OU lost to Florida in 2008, Texas lost to Alabama in 2009. A Big 12 team has never returned to a national championship game since, while two ACC teams in Florida State and Clemson have made the big game.
I’m not sure the Big 12 will ever get a team back if the conference doesn’t get its act together in a hurry from a national perspective standpoint.
But still–I thought a look back at that 2006 game between Texas and USC might be fun. Be sure and watch the ending scene with Mac Brown talking to his players about the rest of their lives. Great stuff.