And Alabama, like every good villain, is totally sentient, at all times studying, at all times enhancing, at all times discovering new and much more terrifying methods to decimate its opponents. Over the previous 4 seasons, Alabama has change into extra artistic and dynamic on offense, averaging 488 yards per sport in 2021. In 2015, the Tide averaged 427 yards of offense per sport. No shock, the 2015 model of Alabama nonetheless gained a nationwide title.
After all, groups do, once in a while, beat Alabama, as we noticed this week. Because the 2010-2011 season, Alabama has misplaced a complete of 17 video games. (For comparability, Michigan State, which is de facto good, has misplaced 47 video games in the identical interval.) I feel I keep in mind elements of all of them: In 2021, there was Rachel Home Small, the spouse of Texas A&M kicker Seth Small, holding arms with Seth’s mom as her husband kicked the game-winning subject aim to defeat Alabama, then leaping onto the sphere to have a good time in a second that turned pandemonium.
And, in 2013, the Auburn College Marching Band’s ebullient, emotional, exhilarating response to Auburn’s defeat of Alabama on a last-second subject aim returned for a landing in one of the crucial unbelievable moments in school soccer historical past, the “Kick Six.” I watched that sport on a laptop computer in London, and I can inform you what the bed room I used to be in appeared like and the way fuzzy the web connection was. That’s what occurs while you’re Alabama — your losses are so uncommon that they change into valuable jewels of soccer memorabilia.
It’s vital to do not forget that the Tide went 7-6 in Coach Nick Saban’s first yr in Tuscaloosa again in 2007, and earlier than his arrival, the Alabama soccer groups of the early 2000s have been generally fairly good and generally sort of mediocre. The yr I used to be born, 1987, Alabama went 7-5. It was one other group, the Miami Hurricanes, that completed 12-0 that yr and gained the nationwide championship, a part of an period for that group when it was so totally superior to its opponents that the gamers had loads of alternatives to invent new finish zone celebrations.
Sometime, Alabama gained’t be Alabama anymore. Let’s recognize this factor of magnificence — or, extra precisely, this unstoppable hell beast from the nice past — whereas we will.