Day: January 9, 2018

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The Best Sports Season is Over

College football is my favorite sport. I love the passion and excitement. I love ( and sometimes hate) the drama that each game can, and so often does, provide. I love the fact that 85% of the players on the best teams and 99% on the other teams are playing just because they love to play football and/or they love their school.. I love the rivalries and the fans.

Anyhow now I will have to wait till September for my weekly dose of spectator sports induced cardio activity. So for now I will record a few of my thoughts from the game last night. My thoughts won’t be a good as my friends Bernard or Grant ,who both offer excellent sports insights – even if they do so sporadically.

  • Watching a game with my kids when we are all pulling for the same team is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon or evening. Watching a championship game where I am pulling for one side and one of my sons has rooted for the other team for years is no where near as much fun. Actually it basically stinks. I hope Alabama and Georgia never play another meaningful game against each other, though I know that is an unrealistic wish.
  • Jalen Hurts handled being benched as well anyone ever has. He was a gentleman and a very good teammate. I was very impressed with him. Bama definitely made it to the finals in large part because of him and the way he handled being benched in the second half helped them to win the whole thing.
  • Benching your starting QB (who has pretty much done nothing but win for the past two years) for the second half of the national championship game is a strong move. Saban has the clout to make a move like that and survive, but man that was still an impressive move.
  • Georgia is going to continue to be scary good over the next several years. From the number of true Freshmen making plays for Alabama last night it looks like there is a really good chance that Alabama will simply “reload” again for next year. This should be a match up that we see several times at least in the SEC championship. I can’t imagine two SEC teams being allowed into the playoffs again anytime soon.
  • 5 Championships in 9 years is absurd. “The Process” that Nick Saban pushes within Bama definitely produces results. HT to Lindsey for this interesting article on the Masochism of Nick Saban.
  • Before the game Pam and I made a bet with friends of ours who live in Athens, work in a campus ministry at UGA, and have a son who plays in the band. We would send them cheese is Georgia won and they would send us something from Georgia is the Bulldogs won. I look forward to seeing what they send us.
  • If my friends who are Big 10 fans who live around me want to complain about Alabama being in the playoffs they should blame Wisconsin. If Wisconsin had won the Big 10 championship Alabama would not have been in the playoffs. After losing to Iowa there was little chance that Ohio State was ever going to go into the playoffs ahead of a one loss Alabama team. The University of Central Florida has a better argument but I wasn’t surprised that they were left out of the playoffs.
  • While I am glad that Georgia’s Tyler Simmons was called offsides, he sure didn’t look offsides to me. Of course, all dealing with bad calls is a part of the game.

Anyhow Roll Tide Roll!