MIAMI GARDENS, Florida – At the end of a long, grueling, weird, awkward season for college football, we finally got a little bit of normalcy, as the final seconds ticked the clock Monday night at Hard Rock Stadium: Alabama, another national championship trophy after winning in a dominant and historic way.
There were only a few spectators left to watch the celebration, a small fraction of the approximately 14,000 fans who entered the facility considering all the restrictions in place. In any other year, the camp hides with friends, family, media, photographers and event staff in a big celebration that runs 10 deep along the makeshift stage. On Monday night, a lone player made snow angels in the fallen confetti while teammates only hugged the team staff.
Winning it in Alabama seemed like the inevitable end, of course, as the sport’s most dominant coach brought the most dominant team together with the most dominant players. For those who just tuned in Monday to the National Football Playoff Championship presented by AT&T against Ohio State, believing it I could they only saw a competitive game, they saw exhibition no. 13 which showed why the Buckeyes simply had no chance.
There was Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith, owner of Ohio State so completely that he snatched several title records before the break and would have broken more if he hadn’t dislocated a finger in his right hand. Najee Harris ran back, stepping on the Buckeyes so hard, that they inevitably broke their collective wills. At the forefront of it all was quarterback Mac Jones, who orchestrated another near-flawless offensive performance while, yes, setting his own championship records along the way.
The Crimson Tide could not be stopped during the season. They couldn’t stop at a 52-24 championship-winning performance that no one will soon forget.
“For me, this team has won just about any team,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban, who won a seventh record national title. “I played 13 games, I was undefeated with all the discomfort we had this season. I think there’s a bit to write about when it comes to the team’s legacy.”
This Alabama team will have its special place in history and rightly so. What this team achieved goes beyond points, luxury stats and the Heisman. Sports players sacrificed more than they have ever done; they endured more than ever; they were challenged both physically and mentally in ways difficult to understand.
They played football during a pandemic.
Perhaps he could not sink into how remarkable it was this season until much later, perhaps years ago, with time to reflect on the extraordinary circumstances in which it all arose.
“It was an unprecedented year with a lot of adversity,” said Alex Leatherwood, Alabama’s offensive striker. “But we stayed the course. We tried to stay focused and we took it all day and we really got everyone to understand what we wanted to achieve and come out winners.”
Ohio State also pushed for that opportunity, believing it also had a championship-level team led by Justin Fields. Although the Buckeyes started their season later than Alabama, they dealt with a myriad of coronavirus problems to get to this point, and even discussed whether to postpone this championship game because they had more COVID-19 problems during the last week.
All of this speaks to the uncertainty it filled this season. No one really knew if college football would reach the goal, as basically the coaches told anyone who listened, “You’re just as good as your last test.” The season felt precarious every day, with coaches, players and coaches holding their breath waiting for the results of the coronavirus tests.
This only increased the pressure of the players as they did their best to follow all the safety protocols to keep playing. Because SEC teams treated outbreaks and Saban treated coronavirus with himself, only one team felt really safe: Alabama, thanks to Smith, Harris, Jones, and everyone else. Yes, there were some calls coming along the way. But this is a team that hasn’t scored 40 or more points just twice and managed to get three players to finish in the top five for Heisman, and today a very real case could be made that they should have finished 1-2 -3.
This doesn’t just happen by accident, of course. Saban recruits the best players and then develops the best players. But this type of offensive action was not pre-ordered either. Saban saw the changing landscape of college football towards open and open crime, and changed with it, reinventing the Crimson Tide into an unstoppable offensive force. Think of the first two times he won a national championship with Alabama: The Tide totaled 58 points combined, just six more than where they finished Monday night.
Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian called it a masterful game again. Knowing full well that Smith would be key in every play, he put Smith in new and different formations to get the ball. But, most of the time, Smith just got to get the Ohio State defenders and beat them. By the end of the first half, Smith had 12 catches for 215 yards and three touchdowns, broke three SEC career records, set a BCS / CFP championship game record, tied another and set a record for school cakes.
“It does a really good job of calling a game,” Saban said of Sarkisian. “He knows what the other team is doing, he knows how to attack him, he knows where to put the players to put them in position so they can make those plays against what the other team is doing. He’s just done a fantastic job course.”
Jones, meanwhile, threw 464 yards – breaking Joe Burrow’s BCS / CFP championship record and tying Burrow’s passing touchdown record with five.
A year after college football experts declared Burrow LSU’s roster the biggest offense of all time, Alabama claimed that crown. None of this should come as a shock: Alabama missed the playoffs a year ago and saw rival Tigers go through everyone similarly. Did anyone think Saban would just be okay with that?
Jones, who suffered a leg injury for much of the second half and still delivered a perfectly placed pass one after the other, took it a step further by declaring Alabama as the maximum offense.
“I think we’re the best team he’s ever played,” Jones said. “No team is going to play an SEC schedule like that again. But at the same time, we’re very happy to win this game and put the icing on the cake. There wasn’t a lot of pressure; we just wanted to go out and play in the game we’ve all been playing since we were 5 “.
Despite all the unknowns about how it would unfold this season, the Crimson Tide was committed to each other.
“We had a mission,” Smith said. “Everyone wanted to finish things the right way. We all came to work every day and got to work. We got the result we wanted.”
And ultimately, the result we could all see coming.