So this is the way the Alabama football dynasty ends. Not with a bang but a series of helpless whimpers.
Former coach Nick Saban, in his diminished role as Pat McAfee’s potty-mouthed straight man, delivered a sad-eyed screed on strength of schedule. His words carried no weight with a playoff committee led by the athletics director of the school that handed the GOAT an L as a retirement gift.
Alabama AD Greg Byrne made a mild threat to pull the plug on strong non-conference matchups to come, but it sprang more from emotion than reason. His team was excluded from the first 12-team playoff because it lost three conference games, two of them to 6-6 teams, one of them by 21 points.
Then there was former quarterback Greg McElroy. The night before the final nail, during the ACC Championship telecast, he listened to TV partner Sean McDonough make a passionate argument for SMU to make the playoff instead of Alabama. McElroy offered no counterpoint on his alma mater’s behalf, responding with only a white flag of silent surrender.
McElroy hadn’t been blindsided and muted with such force since Auburn’s T’Sharvan Bell knocked him silly during Alabama’s futile attempt at a comeback to close the Camback.
That 2010 flashback is even more fitting considering this is Alabama’s most disturbing season since one of Saban’s more talented teams lost its way en route to three defeats. The tide turned the very next year as the Built By Bama standard started to resonate and pay more consistent dividends on and off the field.
It’s largely forgotten now, except when LSU or Oklahoma State fans gather, but Alabama needed help to win it all in 2011 after losing the Game of the Century at home to the Tigers during the regular season. The BCS computers and pollsters gave the one-loss Tide a slim edge over the one-loss Cowboys on selection day. Trent Richardson and his running mates turned the LSU rematch into no contest.
Alabama won another benefit of the doubt to make the four-team playoff in 2017 after losing the Iron Bowl. The breaks bounced their way last year, too, when Florida State’s quarterback got hurt.
Not this time. There is no clearer sign that the dynasty has descended from decline to dearly departed than coming up short in a debate against SMU. For the first time in a long time, the Bama brand did not carry the day.
It didn’t matter to the committee that Alabama had a superior strength of record (9 vs. 15) and strength of schedule (16 vs. 60). It didn’t matter that Alabama had played four games against the committee’s final top 25 and won three of them – including one of the best wins of the entire season over final No. 2 Georgia – while SMU had lost Saturday to No. 16 Clemson in its only ranked matchup.
Warde Manuel’s fellow committee members backpedaled on his own words from a week ago. He said they dropped Miami below Alabama at that time because of the Tide’s stronger metrics. He said they might drop SMU below Alabama for the same reason if the Ponies lost to Clemson.
What happened? SMU lost to Clemson. Alabama had better metrics than SMU. The committee did not drop SMU below Alabama for the last at-large spot in the field.
So this is the way the Alabama football dynasty ends. Not with an embarrassing playoff loss to Penn State or Boise State, which is SMU’s manageable path to the semifinals as the No. 11 seed, but in a meaningless bowl matchup against Michigan.
That game in something called the ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa on New Year’s Eve morning isn’t merely an empty consolation prize. It’s a painful reminder that the last time the Tide snuck into the playoff, it got excused by the Wolverines in the semifinals. And then its legendary coach retired.
Nothing has been quite the same since in Tuscloosa.
To be honest, the dynasty was in decline before VRBO type-cast Saban as a snarling vacation home owner. This is the third time in the last six years that Alabama has missed the playoff. This will be the fourth straight year and sixth time in seven seasons that Alabama does not win the national championship.
The losses have started to pile up faster than the less-than-morose “mourners” that have been dying to throw dirt on Alabama’s grave. To improved but inferior Vanderbilt for the first time in 40 years. To playoff newbie Tennessee on the second straight trip to Knoxville. To woeful Oklahoma, the SEC’s 13th-place team, by three touchdowns. To SMU in a straight-up debate on who’s in and who’s out.
The rest of Dixieland is beyond delighted. The self-assured, script-A aura is dead and buried. Gone. GONE. You can blame Manuel for going back on his words or Greg Sankey for agreeing to this convoluted format.
None of it excuses Alabama for how and how often it found ways to lose games it had no business losing. Dynasties ultimately die from within, and though Alabama is not about to hit bottom and become Auburn, the We Want Bama everyone knew and loved or hated is a thing of the past.
No one, not even Saban, could build it back better. The question now is whether DeBoer can build it back at all.