Alabama’s thrilling 45-40 victory over Clemson in the College Football Playoff national championship game was a victor for ESPN, overnight ratings indicated.
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That Smart’s defense couldn’t handle Watson will be of importance only if Georgia faces Clemson next season, which would probably come only in a playoff game, and if you’re Georgia and you haven’t played for a national title since 1982, you’ll take that matchup and glad.
Tonight, the Clemson Tigers will go head-to-head against the Alabama Crimson Tide for college football’s national championship.
– This is the fifth time Alabama has won a national title without being ranked No. 1 during the regular season.
The only coach in the last 35-plus years with almost the amount of Saban’s success is Ohio State’s Urban Meyer.
Miami, which considered shutting down its program due to lack of interest several years earlier, pulled off one of the greatest upsets to win its first national title.
The toll on the players has been a longtime concern of Saban and other coaches when talk about going to a playoff system inevitably emerged each year.
Clemson’s sublime sophomore marked himself a clear front runner for college football’s top individual prize with a stellar performance on the biggest stage of his career.
“Championship football is a game of a few plays, and that’s really what this one came down to, just a few plays”, Swinney said during his postgame press conference. We weren’t doing a great job of getting them stopped. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, ‘” he said.
Watson finished with 405 yards passing, the most any quarterback has hung on the Crimson Tide this year.
In the first quarter, Alabama’s coaching staff in the booth recognized an opportunity for a potential future onside kick after seeing Clemson’s alignment for its kick return that followed Derrick Henry’s 50-yard touchdown run.
So dominant is Alabama most times that gimmickry and hocus-pocus are seldom required to do the deed. His team yielded to Alabama because of a handful of big plays the Crimson Tide turned, most particularly on special teams. No one wanted the Tigers to win more than Dabo Swinney, their head coach, and former walk-on at the University Alabama.
The two teams scored 40 points alone (five touchdowns, two field goals) in the fourth quarter, with some form of scoring occurring on each of the final seven possessions of the game.
“We weren’t playing very well on defense”, Saban said.
Some want Saban to go back to the NFL. But even at No. 2, one-loss Alabama (Ole Miss got the win in September) is still the seven-point favorite, according to Las Vegas oddsmakers.
That last score gave Clemson the cover, and reportedly swung over million in Vegas alone.
Alabama had never been challenged like this in a championship game under Saban.
However, it was the plays after the onside kick that really sealed Clemson’s fate – a long pass to O.J. Howard and a kickoff return for a touchdown shortly thereafter.
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“Initially it felt like a dream”, he said after the game, “and I tried to tell everybody to wake me up because I thought it wasn’t real”.
