The 2011 football season came to a satisfying conclusion Saturday as the Alabama Crimson Tide and roughly 30,000 fans filed into Bryant-Denny Stadium to celebrate the Tide’s 14th national championship.

I was at that celebration with a friend of mine, and we were caught up in the pageantry of the moment: the season highlights, the speeches, the accolades, the roar of the crowd and one last confetti shower for head coach Nick Saban.

When we got back from the celebration, my friend looked at some of the commemorative championship posters handed out during the celebration; that’s when he noticed something. “Huh, our record’s not on here,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, laughing. “We’re probably just too embarrassed about that loss to LSU earlier this season. We don’t want people to know we weren’t undefeated.” It was said as a joke. It was meant as a joke. But then I got to thinking, you know, there probably are more than a few Alabama fans out there who are less than pleased the Tide couldn’t pull off another undefeated season – national championship or not. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but the fact remains that somewhere out in the world, there are fans out there getting irked that Alabama had a loss on its schedule and the team couldn’t achieve that ever-elusive perfect season. However, just the fact that people can have those expectations shows the successful nature of this program in recent years and years long gone. I mean, what other fanbase in the nation can boast such nerve to demand that type of success every year with an undefeated season to boot? I’ll give you a moment to think about that  …  You back? You couldn’t think of one, could you? At least, not on the level Alabama fans are, anyway. I’ve heard it said that Alabama fans are the New York Yankees of the college football world. We feel entitled to success because we’ve had so much of it before. However, it’s actually probably the other way around. Despite the blemish on its record, Alabama made some huge accomplishments this year – even by its own standards. It became the first team to beat a conference foe in the BCS National Championship Game and was the first to do so without winning its own conference or division. It was the first team in a long time to actually beat an SEC team in the title game, and it delivered the first and only shutout in BCS bowl history. Alabama also had eight players named to the Pro Football Weekly All-America team and gave Saban his third BCS title and his second at Alabama. That’s a whole lot of success for just one season. A lot of teams couldn’t accomplish in a decade what Alabama accomplished in a single game. Also, with that earlier loss in mind, it goes to show it really is about the journey and not the destination. It’s pretty safe to assume that Alabama had a chip on its shoulder heading into the national championship game. Amidst all the doubt, all the naysayers and everyone else’s two cents on why Alabama shouldn’t be allowed a second opportunity at LSU, the Tide rolled into New Orleans, whipped the only team who beat them that season and claimed its 14th national championship. Can anyone say Alabama would have given the same performance if they came into the game undefeated, while LSU came in with revenge on its mind? Who can say? Whatever one’s opinion on the subject, Alabama can claim another consensus championship to add to its illustrious history. Undefeated or not, this season is one that will be remembered for a long time among Alabama fans, and that is something truly special.