Pre Game Thoughts

It has been more than a month since I last posted on this blog.

When Alabama defeated Georgia to claim its 23rd SEC Championship, I was unable to grade the game. Our Correspondent From The Tire Store stepped up and posted one of the best post-game reviews ever to grace this blog.

Today, there is a sign on the door of the Tire Store, It reads: Gone To Miami-Will Reopen After The Game.

Our intrepid Correspondent and the entire pit crew will be watching the Tide in person on Monday night. Here's wishing them safe and joyful travel. And here's hoping the Tire Store runs a $15 Oil Change Special and that Andy throws in a free gallon of windshield washer fluid with every service to celebrate Alabama's 15th National Championship.

The topic of discussion wherever I go seems to be turning towards our individual and collective prep for Monday's game. A subject about which I have been a little reticent to engage. But, my inner clock tells me that the time has come.

First, though, a little shout out to the Ole Miss Rebel Black Bears who put a beat down on the Pitt team that took ND to three overtimes in South Bend. About that Irish-Panthers game: I gained a little inside information yesterday afternoon. One of my law partners, a HUGE ND fan [with good cause, since his father is retired from the ND faculty] organized a guys-trip to the ND/Pitt game earlier this season. One of the guys on the trip was a client, Eric, who is a ND law grad. It turns out that three times Eric had been to see Notre Dame play when it was 8-0 and each of those previous times the Irish lost the game that Eric attended. So, when, at the end of the 3rd Quarter, Pitt had a two TD lead, Eric told the others that he had to leave. He knew that his presence in the stadium was working a hardship on the Irish. So, he left the seating area and went out into the outer circular concourse as far away from the field of play as he could get without actually passing through a turn-style. ND rallied, and needed only a PAT to take the lead late in the game. So Eric ventured back towards his seat and got to a place where he could see the field only to witness the ND kicker miss the PAT! So back he went to the outer edges of the stadium away from any line of sight to the playing surface where he remained throughout the three OTs.

I commended him for doing the right thing for his team. For the fourth time in four games an 8-0 Notre Dame had not been ahead on the scoreboard when time expired with Eric attending the game. What more proof do you need? It is bad luck not to be superstitious.

This brings me back to the present. Monday's showdown will be epic. If only we still lived in an age of poets! If there were a Homer alive today, he would sing an epic poem of heroes: Jones and McCarron, Warmack and Steen, Fluker, Cyrus, Lacy, Yeldon, Cooper, Williams, Dial, Patrick, Milliner, Johnson, Mosley, DePriest, Lester and Sunseri. But, also Golson, Nix, Tae'o and more. Whoever wins, this game will be the stuff of legends.

I am completely at peace. Yes, I long for the Tide to be victorious. I want the script crimson A to be the symbol of a football dynasty. A win on Monday night will achieve that goal. But a loss of a game will not mean a loss of the goal. This team is poised to be better in 2013 than it was in 2012. If Alabama is not able to achieve a third national championship in four years, then hats off to Notre Dame. Would anyone argue that the Tide is less than the greatest program in the game if that third title comes in year five? Does anyone reasonably expect ND to replicate what Alabama has achieved under Nick Saban?

The envious have been spreading rumors about Coach Saban leaving Tuscaloosa for the NFL. He has, wisely, eschewed any response to those rumors. How could he respond? If he denied that he had any interest in the Browns job, the haters would simply bray about how poorly he handled the public relations surrounding his departure from the Dolphins, and more fuel would be added to the fire of speculation and distraction.

Here's my prediction about all that: Nick Saban will be the head football coach at the University of Alabama for the 2013 season, and for every season after that until he has achieved what no other member of his profession can claim: six national championships at Alabama [tying Coach Bryant's record] and seven total on his resume [an unparalleled accomplishment].

Here's my prediction about Monday night: when the clock sits at all zeros and the confetti cannons blast their colored chaff into the air, the Crimson Tide will be the undisputed master of all it surveys, and Nick Saban will be half-way towards composing his magnum opus.

The Commissioner