Inside The Helmets For Clemson-Oklahoma and Alabama-Michigan State
This college football playoff thing has already cost Alabama one National Championship and now the school is in it again.
Standing in its way this time is another team from “that” conference while two other teams are shoved off to a side stage. If this were a big music festival Alabama-Michigan State would be the headliner while Clemson-Oklahoma would be on the other side of the area on something called the “Bluegrass Stage.”
ESPN is still needing reviving from when the college football committee told the network the games would be played on New Year’s Eve instead of New Year’s Day, or even Saturday, Jan. 2.
The look from ESPN executives must have been an all-time classic. Playing the national semifinals on NYE is just plain dumb. Officials offered an excuse weaker than UCLA’s run defense. Or Auburn’s offense.
Unfortunately, nobody consulted the Prognosticator on this and so we are saddled with having the two biggest bowl games played on New Year’s Eve while the remaining bowl games are insignificant afterthoughts on New Year’s Day.
Times are Eastern.
CLEMSON vs. OKLAHOMA (4 p.m., ESPN)
The Tigers enter the Final Four as the #1 team in the country yet are being treated like the ugly girl at the big dance that can’t find a guy to kiss her at midnight. She’s there, you know, but everyone is ignoring her because there’s bling in the room.
The Sooners come in as the shining example of a playoff team, one that lost a scuffle in Texas but is all shiny and polished for the show. Come gametime, they will step out from behind the curtain and put on a performance that will send the Tigers sweeping down the Oklahoma plains.
That’s the perception anyway. But it’s not reality. OU is kind of like Auburn in that it wilts when it’s expected to soar. How many years under Bob Stoops have the Sooners been picked to be National Championship contenders only to finish out of the Top 20? Only when the Sooners are overlooked – as they were in that Sugar Bowl game against Alabama – do they rise up and play like real contenders.
Clemson is so used to being overlooked, it’s motivation for these wild cats, certainly for its charismatic coach Dabo Swinney, the modern-day Pete Carroll. That is to say the coolest coach in America. Maybe you can’t name one player on the team other than dynamic quarterback Deshawn Watson but that’s the way ‘ol Dabo likes it. Dabo will have his team loose and ready to play. And this one may not even be close by the fourth quarter. Winner: Clemson.
ALABAMA vs. MICHIGAN STATE (8 p.m., ESPN)
The Pachyderms are stomping mad at themselves for losing to Ohio State last year. The players and even Nick Saban are saying – for the second year in a row – that some of the previous team’s players felt entitled and were looking ahead to their NFL Draft status.
This overlooks the real problem of the Ohio State game, and that’s Lane Kiffin throwing wide-receiver screens the entire second quarter when the running game was running the Buckeyes back to Bourbon Street, then the defense not being able to stop the OSU runners.
The Tide’s offense this year is not an overwhelming tidal wave. Instead it’s like a constant flow that slowly erodes what’s around it. Get hit enough times and splashed in the face with the relentless Derek Henry, and it will soon have little opposition.
Throw in the play-action to Calvin Ridley and ArDarius Stewart and that’s like a rogue wave bashing the defense.
It would seem that everything is right for the Tide to roll. Alabama is playing an opponent well suited to its offensive and defensive temperament and Saban didn’t teach former pupil Mark Dantonio everything he knows, right?
Sparty has survived scares more often than a kid in a Halloween horror house this year and is either lucky, overrated or hiding something.
Well let the Prognosticator tell you something about Sparty sports. In football, as in basketball, Sparty is far more gritty than flashy. It seems to thrive on being the underdog – this happens when you’ve long been overshadowed in your own state – yet is as tough as a $2 steak.
Michigan State also seems to play to the level of its opponent (how else to explain 21-14 to Purdue and 31-24 to Rutgers?) and is like a dog at the dinner table in that it never goes away until the last scrap of food is consumed.
This SHOULD be a game Alabama has well in hand headed into the fourth quarter. But Sparty doesn’t play that way and it could be a right game until the very moment the ball drops in Times Square.
That 15 you see on the Alabama helmets at the press conferences, by the way, is the number of National Championships the school has won. Next season, you’ll probably be seeing a helmet with a number 16 at Alabama press conferences. Winner: Alabama
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