The Crimson Tide just won another national title and will be near the top of everybody’s early picks for next year, says Bill King of Nashville Sports Radio.
Defense big key for Razorbacks facing road matchup with LSU tonight
ESPN color commentator Jimmy Dykes said Arkansas’ defense is going to have to play well to slow down the Tigers’ offense in game tonight.
Neighbors previews Florida team that looks on film like ‘self-scout’ session
Razorbacks coach Mike Neighbors met with the media Wednesday morning and said looking at the Gators is like seeing his own team on film.
Alabama staying on top of college football not that bad of thing, says Goode
While some jump up and down that Nick Saban is ruining college football, former Razorback Brett Goode thinks having them at top not that bad.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast – Arkansas offense could explode in 2021
Tye & Tommy on the Nick Saban effect, new coaching rumors, Jimmy Dykes, plus the 2021 AR offense!
Expanding College Football Playoff will only include more of the same
Not a whole lot has changed in the world of college football in at least 63 years and, despite how much you beg, it’s probably not going to change.
With Alabama now having won six national championships in the last 14 years there are some kicking and screaming SOMETHING has to be done to break ’em up.
That isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The reason I used the number 63 above is that’s how many years I’ve been around. Since I had no idea how things finished in 1957, I looked up who would have been in a College Football Playoff that year.
Even though Auburn finished No. 1 in the Associated Press media poll, the Tigers were on NCAA probation for paying two high school players. The next three were Ohio State, Michigan State and Oklahoma.
See, you think anything has changed?
At that time, the Sooners were the team everybody was trying to figure out a way to break up. Bud Wilkinson was on a roll, losing just nine games in the 1950’s. That included two separate winning streaks over 40 games long.
The only schools that are not in a current Power 5 conference in the final Top 20 (the number was moved to 25 in 1989’s football season … in case you were wondering it was just 10 until the 1968 football season) were Navy, Rice, Army and Virginia Military.
Service academies were coming to their end of being big-time players in college athletics. Rice didn’t lose interest in athletics until the 1960’s.
Nothing has changed. The only time a team not a traditional power won a national football championship was 1984 when Brigham Young University somehow backed into a title. Don’t worry, I haven’t figured that one out, either.
Some folks hoop and holler that college football isn’t fair these days. Only a few teams have a chance to win the title and somehow they think expanding the playoff is going to help that happen.
No, it won’t and college football has never been about being fair to anybody.
It’s about giving some young adults an expensive free education in exchange for their physical abilities and then making money off that. Several years ago they started using the phrase “student-athlete,” which is laughable at best and probably closer to an outright lie.
Fair bailed out on college football over 100 years ago.
The College Football Playoff runs the sport these days. The NCAA lost control in 1984 when Oklahoma and Georgia won a court battle for their television rights.
Now it’s the CFP that runs the sport and they don’t really care about expanding the current four-team setup, but public-relations pressure will probably make them do it.
The main thing is people talking about college football out of season. That was the beauty of the polls-and-bowls system.
In those days you could have multiple arguments for months about who SHOULD have been No. 1. Amazingly, they got it right most of the time.
Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson and Notre Dame all won national championships under the polls-and-bowls system in the last 63 years.
When BYU won in 1984, they beat a 6-6 Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl and they sorta stumbled into the title because they didn’t play anybody with fewer than four losses.
Most years, everybody in the SEC is playing for second place. What Nick Saban has built usually beats teams even before the game starts.
Arkansas fans may remember Bobby Petrino saying the Hogs’ loss to the Tide in 2009 was partly his fault because he didn’t believe they had a chance to win (he did come close in 2010 but that was the only time).
Most years, Alabama has that effect on folks. It’s not really new.
Bear Bryant said in 1979 he was always shocked when the Crimson Tide weren’t playing for a national championship.
“We take the SEC for granted,” he said.
He won the league 13 times in 25 years in Tuscaloosa. Alabama has had several dynasties over the last 100-plus years.
It won’t be changing anytime soon.
And neither will the playoffs.
Chavanelle on what Stepp meant recruiting top-level wide receivers
Justin Stepp is gone to South Carolina, but Nikki Chavanelle of HawgBeat talked Tuesday afternoon about his impact in recruiting at Arkansas.
Edwards backs out of transfer portal, coming back to Hogs
Linebacker Deon Edwards will be coming back for a sixth year with Arkansas announcing Tuesday he’s withdrawn from the transfer portal after just a few days.
In 2020, Edwards played just six snaps all season … in the last two games of the year.
Most of his playing time has come on special teams where he has 465 snaps compared to just one 47 on defense.
Only three of 19 scholarship seniors from the 2020 season have not announced what they plan to do with the eligibility relief granted by the NCAA in response to the coronavirus pandemic: linebacker Hayden Henry, wide receiver Tyson Morris and kicker A.J. Reed.
Eight players decided to come back for another year: linebacker Grant Morgan, offensive linemen Ty Clary and Myron Cunningham, tight end Blake Kern, running back T.J. Hammonds, wide receiver De’Vion Warren and defensive end Dorian Gerald.
Returning seniors do not count against the 85-man scholarship limit.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast – Saban adds another title
Tye & Tommy on Bama winning, Arkansas baseball news, Isaiah Joe’s performance and more!
Saban’s ‘ultimate team’ shows rest of SEC Tide not dropping off much
Alabama’s routine dismantling of Ohio State on Monday night was a message to the rest of the SEC they are still the king of the mountain and not coming down soon.
At least as long as Nick Saban hangs around.
The Crimson Tide’s 52-24 win over the Buckeyes was his seventh national title. It will not be surprising if the adds one or two more to that total before he decides to step down.
Most of the time losing games contributes to whatever health issues that a legendary coach has when he retires. Saban himself has said he’ll think about retiring when he can’t contribute anymore.
Interestingly enough, it was Bear Bryant who told a reporter in 1982, “I can’t coach ’em anymore” a month or so before he retired after winning six national titles. Just so we’re accurate here, Saban has tied Bryant for titles won at Alabama ( won the title coaching LSU).
He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon.
“This is the ultimate team,” he said in the postgame celebration. “They had to overcome and persevere through so much adversity.”
Saban endured LSU’s Greatest Team Ever proclamations last season, then had maybe his best team in the midst of a global pandemic that completely up-ended his carefully-regulated “process.”
It all came together Monday night when Crimson Tide quarterback Mac Jones had the best championship game in history. He beat LSU’s Joe Burrow by a yard passing in a 36-of-45 night with five touchdowns.
“This was a team that was always together,” Saban said later. “They always bought in. This was a great team.”
Every championship coach has his favorite team, for whatever reason. Bryant’s favorite was his 1961 team that was his first.
On a side note to that team, Arkansas played gave them their closest game of the year in the Sugar Bowl in a game the Tide won, 10-3, on a crisp partly cloudy day in New Orleans where the Tide kept the Hogs’ Lance Alworth in check. It seemed Alworth had about a dozen plays where he was tripped up by an ankle tackle or something.
This team, though, is Saban’s favorite … at least until another team comes along, which is probably not going to happen. Like everybody else, Alabama had things nobody ever thought about having to deal with this season.
Saban, though, just did it better than anybody else.
No idea about anybody else, but I knew this game was over on the second play of the game when Jones threw a pass to Devonta Smith and he turned what would normally be a minimal gain into a 22-yard play just because he out-ran everybody.
Smith set a playoff record with 215 yards on 12 catches and scored three times. That was just the first half, by the way, because he injured a finger almost immediately in the second half.
“I’ll be alright,” he said after the game.
Considering he will be a first-round draft pick in the NFL Draft in April, that’s good news. It was just a finger that probably won’t affect him much.
Alabama simply dominated Ohio State with an offense that probably could have scored considerably more and a defense that has progressed through the season.
Remember when that was supposed to be the Tide’s weakness this year?
Defensive lineman Christian Barmore, named the MVP on that side of the ball after the game, may have just summed up everything after the game from the Alabama point of view:
“We came to dominate,” he said.
And that’s exactly what the Tide did against an Ohio State team that has now been knocked around three times in national title games against the SEC.
The bad news for the rest of the SEC is this may not be the end of the Tide’s run.
Maybe the biggest question is whether the gap is getting bigger, especially for programs like Arkansas.
