As I sat and watched the Alabama Crimson Tide absolutely crush the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to win its 15th overall championship in school history, I realized something.
The state of Alabama has an absolute stranglehold on the world of college football, and the mark it’s made will likely leave a lasting impression for a long, long time.
With Alabama’s win over Notre Dame, it marked the fourth consecutive national championship won by a team in the state of Alabama: three by Alabama and one by Auburn. To put that feat in perspective, before Auburn won the 2010 championship, no state could boast having two schools in its borders win back-to-back championships.
Additionally, a team from the Southeastern Conference has won the national championship the last seven years in a row, a record that will likely never be broken. The state of Alabama is responsible for more than half of them. And as unbreakable as the SEC’s record appears, I’d say what the state of Alabama has done will be just as everlasting, maybe even more so.
As a matter of fact, I’m not entirely sure why other fans around the nation hate the SEC as much as they do. I mean, sure, football in the Southeast is probably the best football you’re going to see, and the fans have no problem letting you know. But still, it’s not like any team outside Alabama is responsible for the current monopoly on crystal.
But how is this so? How did the state of Alabama come to a point of such dominance? Well, that’s fairly easy to explain. For one, Alabama is right in the middle of the Southeast, the hotbed of the most talented college football in the nation.
To use an industrial metaphor, they say the hardest steel goes through the hottest fire. Well, after traversing the hellish furnace that is the SEC regular season schedule, it’s no wonder Alabama teams have seen the amount of success they’ve seen.
But it comes down to more than just a competitive edge from our surroundings. As mentioned, Alabama is a place where – for better or worse – football, especially college football, is king. It’s a part of our identity, something we readily acknowledge as part of who we are. It’s one of the few areas in which Alabama can claim national supremacy, consequently making it a vast source of state pride.
Still, there are other schools, not only in the South, with their own passion and pride for college football. But the reason they haven’t seen the kind of success as Alabama is because Alabama simply loves it more. And the teams have given the state plenty to love over the last four years.
Records have been broken, players flung in the list of all-time great, dynasties restored and old glories rekindled. Players and coaches have been erected into statues, their feats memorialized forever before they could even get the grass stains out of their clothes. Fans may have a fickle relationship with their teams, but when the teams get it right, good luck trying to find a more rabid fan base.
And that’s why states with an incredible source of blue chip talent like Florida, Texas and California can’t keep up with this state, even with their recruiting hotbeds. For them, football may be a passion, and a hot one at that, but it pales in comparison to Alabama’s.
So get comfortable, football fans. Alabama has sealed itself as the best in the country, and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere soon.
