The prevailing wisdom is that Alabama doesn't need to win Saturday's SEC Championship game. Not in the need-it-to-flesh-out-every-hope-and-dream way that Georgia does.
It can lose and still get into the four-team national championship playoff because, well, it’s Alabama and Alabama gets a Mulligan pretty much whenever it needs one.
Which seemed to comfort Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban not at all when he addressed the media in the final pregame news conference Friday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about what-ifs. (Losing Saturday) would be a what-if. We like to focus on the game,” he said.
The message already had gotten through to the players. Earlier this week back in Tuscaloosa, linebacker Christian Miller was thinking back on last season’s route to the national championship, when Alabama made the cut after not even playing in this conference championship. (It was detoured by a regular-season loss to Auburn).
“It was tough because we put our fate in other people’s (the playoff committee’s) hands. We did it to ourselves,” he said. “It was my first time not playing in a SEC Championship game, and it definitely was awkward for me. I think we learned from that. We took those emotions and remembered that feeling of not being there. We’re looking to making the most of this opportunity.”
“We never want to put our destiny in the hands of somebody else,” offensive tackle Jonah Williams said. “I think that on top of the challenges we have – just playing high quality teams week in and week out – we also have that (drive). There’s no room to slip up because then it’s not in your hands.”
Oh, great, just what the college football world needs: A motivated Alabama.
It is pretty safe to say that Saban and his fellas will not just be going through the motions Saturday, content in the knowledge that they have shown all they need to show in beating a dozen teams this season by at least 20 points (tied for an NCAA record).
Alabama has been so dominant that there is no evidence how this version might react if Georgia hangs into the fourth quarter. Thus far, the second half has been just a couple of pedicures short of a day spa for Bama.
Which prompted a question Friday to the winner of five national titles at Alabama if he was concerned, or at least curious, about how one of his teams might handle a little stress. Like stress wasn’t already the mother’s milk of this program.
What followed was a mini-symposium on steely focus, Saban style: “You never know how your team is going to respond,” he said, “but if you focus on the next play – and you’re not focused on the scoreboard, you’re focused not even on winning or losing but how do I execute on the next play – then that play becomes the most important thing. The circumstance and the situation in the game really doesn’t matter. Hopefully we’ve been able to drive that home to our players, so they can stay focused even if they are in a tight game.”
Beating Nick Saban is not impossible. You will note that the middle column of his lifetime head coaching record (259-79-1) is not the empty set.
But beating Saban has been shown to be exceedingly difficult. No one’s done it yet this season. No one’s come within three touchdowns of doing it. And Georgia beating him in Saturday’s SEC Championship is considered highly unlikely by the mole people who live inside casino sports books (the Bulldogs are a 13 1/2-point underdog).
Hanging a rare loss on the imperious Saban is complicated even more if you are a close acquaintance, as is the Bulldogs Kirby Smart. Saban is 15-0 vs. his former assistants, never letting them forget that he is Socrates and they the students at his feet. He’s the lead dog, and for the rest of them, the view never changes.
Much like last season’s national championship game between the same principals, this mentor-mentee theme is being flogged once again.
And once more, Saban is pooh-poohing it.
“I really don’t look at it that way at all,” he said earlier in the week. “It’s not personal for me. (Winning) would be gratifying to our players. It would be the next step towards going to the playoffs. Those would be the objectives that we want. It’s not about me, it’s not about (Smart), it’s not about the fact that we worked together. It’s never about that to me.”
He even offered a quite logical explanation for the dominance. “Well, I think that all those things are circumstantial,” Saban said. “Obviously, Georgia's got one of the best teams in the country, and Kirby's built that there and improved that circumstance. A lot of guys that we've played against in the past that are our assistants, they were rebuilding programs that were down and hadn't had an opportunity to build them up.”
Smart stands alone as the only former assistant who has dared to even play Saban close – last season’s 26-23 championship loss going to overtime. Take that one out of the equation, and Saban owns an average 31.6-point margin of victory in other 14 games against his coaching spawn.
It's nothing personal. Just business.
“Hey, we grew up with Kirby,” Saban said in the build-up to Saturday. Between stops at LSU, the Miami Dolphins and Alabama, Smart spent 11 years in Saban’s company. “We were there when his children were born. I know his family and have a tremendous amount of respect for him and appreciate the great job he did for us.
“You always like to see those guys do well. When you compete against them, it's really not personal, at least not to me.”
Earlier Friday, Saban and Smart even shared a few laughs at the SEC Coaches’ luncheon. As in this exchange during their moderated discussion, as reported by Chip Towers of DawgNation. It concerned the weekly staff pick-up basketball games at Alabama:
Notorious for stacking his team, Saban said, “You’ve got to understand, I always got to pick my team first.”
Pause for a couple of beats. “Yeah, he gets to do that in football, too,” Smart cracked.
Maybe Saban quenched the need-to part of winning long before this thus-far perfect season. The want-to, though, remains undiluted. Georgia should plan accordingly Saturday.
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