When Alabama clinched the top spot in the College Football Playoff, Nick Saban, who found this out watching a nationally-televised selection show in the team's meeting room with players flanked around him, reacted like he’d just won a $5 gift card to Starbucks at an office holiday party raffle.
With one leg folded over the other, he carefully placed a rather large styrofoam cup of coffee into a cup holder, slumped back in his chair, and golf-clapped as if to say, ‘Well, OK.’ Yawn. Bored. This is a man who has been here before.
After all, under Saban, the Crimson Tide have won three of the last five national championships and seriously competed for two more.
Because of a long and rich history, Alabama has long been college football royalty. But Saban, a nomad of sorts before coming to Tuscaloosa, has ushered in a Golden Age there and revived a program that had collected dust cobwebs while in a forgotten cupboard of irrelevancy.
Like Ohio State, its opponent in the upcoming Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, Alabama is a model of efficiency, a program encapsulated by an embarrassment of riches — be it money, coaches, tradition or exceptionally-passionate fans bases — and is usually the biggest and baddest kid on its respective block. If there is a figurative mountain where the sport’s elite programs have entrenched themselves as permanent dwellers, the Crimson Tide and the Buckeyes are neighbors of sorts.
But unlike Ohio State, Alabama has figured out a way to break through a final barrier that’s seemed to thwart the Buckeyes’ national championship hopes for the last eight years.
That mountain? Saban and Co. are at the top of it. They have been for a little while.
“They are the No.1 program in America,” Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said.
The Buckeyes? They’re at base camp, but climbing with Meyer, who is 36-3 over three seasons in Columbus.
To conjure this ascent, one that will surely be expedited with a win against the Crimson Tide in New Orleans, Meyer says he’s pointed to Alabama as a model of success and used its success to motivate his own team.
“I've used Alabama … any time (you’re at) the top of the mountain, I've used them,” Meyer said. “I've respectfully used them because they played very well. Every year they're in a championship hunt and I've used them. So there is a lot of respect for the University of Alabama and their athletes.”
There’s also confidence about Ohio State, which says it can compete with the Crimson Tide after its current campaign yielded a Big Ten title without starting quarterbacks Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett, who suffered season-ending injuries along the way.
“Absolutely. After Week Three, probably not,” Meyer said, referring to an embarrassing loss to Virginia Tech in early September. “I thought at some point we're building (a championship-caliber team). I made the comment I thought it was a year away.”
Instead, the Buckeyes — which needed to replace a bevy of starters on both sides of the ball — hit a growth spurt midway through the season and blossomed under Barrett, who combined for a school-record 45 touchdowns before breaking his ankle against Michigan.
And after smashing Wisconsin, 59-0, in the league’s championship game, this game against Alabama is a barometer for an Ohio State team hoping to reach a similar pinnacle of success.
“I look at it as a great opportunity because for some odd reason we don’t get a lot of respect around here. I look at it as a great opportunity to show the world that we are a different team and the program is a great program,” said redshirt sophomore safety Tyvis Powell.
“For some odd reason, people feel like we lost a step or something like that so I definitely look forward to the challenge. To me, if you wanna be the best you have to beat the best and right now they are one of the top teams in the nation — they are No. 1 actually.”
Added Meyer: “I think it's arguably the best program in America the last five, six, seven, eight years. And to go take a swing and knock them off would be a monumental achievement for a bunch of guys in Columbus, Ohio.”
