Title or bust: Alabama is playing for the SEC championship, but its dream season won’t mean anything without three more wins.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – About 26 years ago, after winning the Iron Bowl against Auburn, thenAlabama coach Gene Stallings complained that his team had won 11 games but hadn’t won anything yet.
Neither has the current Alabama team.
The Crimson Tide dominated Auburn 52-21 at home last weekend, giving Nick Saban’s team 12 wins against zero losses. This marked only the third time Alabama has rung up more than 50 points against its embittered in-state rival. It’s only the third time since Bear Bryant died in 1983 that Alabama has beaten Auburn by at least 30 points.
If you don’t pick Alabama as the clear favorite to win this season’s national championship, then you haven’t been paying attention.
But after sailing through 12 opponents in about three months, Alabama has not won anything yet.
Just as Stallings’ team in 1992 couldn’t claim greatness before rolling through Southeastern Conference and national championship games, neither can this year’s Tide.
And, much more so than in 1992, it’s No. 1 or bust for this Alabama squad.
It’s as if Alabama is looking at that final game and simply repeating, “Want … take … have.”
Saban’s decade-long run, which has produced five national championships, has set the bar so high that nothing up to now will affect how Alabama’s 2018 season is judged.
The Dec. 1 SEC championship game against Georgia and a likely appearance in the College Football Playoff are all that matters. If Alabama doesn’t win a national championship, the gut-punch that the Tide delivered to Auburn on Nov. 24 won’t mean much at all.
Actually, if Alabama wins the national title and doesn’t do so with real authority against real teams such as Clemson, Notre Dame or Oklahoma instead of some plucky underdog, it won’t mean as much. This Alabama team is chasing a spot as one of college football’s greatest teams, not just another national champion, not just another SEC champion, not just another team that won comfortably over its biggest rival.
It’s a shame because the performance against Auburn was breathtaking at times. Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray did his best to push Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa off the Heisman Trophy pedestal with a transcendent performance the night before, but Tagovailoa pushed back with his own shining moment.
He beat Auburn by tying a school record with five touchdown passes, including four during a furious 13-minute span in the second half that choked the life out of the Tigers. In that stretch, Alabama pushed its lead from 17-14 to 45-21.
For Auburn (7-5), the game marked an unfortunate moment in a year that will end some place such as the Belk Bowl in Charlotte, North Carolina. For Alabama, the win over Auburn was just a bump in the road.