There was nothing neutral about the neutral field, just as there was nothing neutral about the SEC’s two division winners.
When one team enters a stadium carrying a No. 1 ranking and the other is lugging a resume with a loss to Indiana and zero victories over a conference team with a winning record, it’s only natural to assume the worst. Which is pretty much what what we got Saturday: The worst.
Alabama looked like the best team in the nation. Missouri looked like only the best team in either Columbia (Missouri or South Carolina).
Alabama 42, Missouri 13. Did anybody not see that coming? Certainly the 73,000-plus in the Georgia Dome had to have expected it, including the relative friends-and-family contingent from Mizzou who made the trip. (The ratio of fans was far worse than 42-13.)
Go ahead, Georgia fans say it. You know you’re thinking it: “That should’ve been us. We would’ve played better. If only … damn’t, Jacksonville!”
Instead, we got this: One of the worst games ever for college football’s most coveted conference championship, certainly the most lopsided since at least Georgia’s 42-10 loss to LSU in 2011.
It’s not Missouri’s fault. Georgia face-planted. Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee fell like dominoes in the East. Missouri was the last flotsam from the East. The Tigers strung together six consecutive wins after getting blown out by Georgia 34-0 at home. The fact that none of their victories came over a team with a winning conference record is just ugly window dressing.
It’s not so much that Missouri didn’t deserve to be here. It’s just that everybody in the East deserved it less.
“Not the time,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said afterward when asked about his team’s legitimacy. “I’m really disappointed. We played a great football team, and when you play a great team you have to play well to win.”
Any team, in the SEC or otherwise, probably would’ve lost to Alabama.
This is a better Crimson Tide team than the one that opened the season in the Georgia Dome with a 33-23 win over West Virginia. It’s certainly a better team than the one that loss at Ole Miss 23-17 four weeks later.
Saban reminded his players after that game that only one of his three national championship teams at Alabama went through the season undefeated (2009). His other two (2011, 2011) each had losses.
“They responded the right way,” Saban said. “Obviously we wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.”
This team has come together like maybe even Saban didn’t anticipate, with eight consecutive wins since the loss, including five over ranked teams. It has succeeded not merely because of its defense — which held Missouri to 41 yards rushing — but quarterback Blake Sims, a fifth-year senior who played his final high school game in the Georgia Dome in the 2009 state championships for Gainesville High, but until this season shuttled between running back and backup quarterback.
Sims was named the game’s MVP Saturday, throwing for 262 yards and two touchdowns, with near-perfect 23-of-27 accuracy. The up-tempo offense Alabama utilizes is as much because of Sims’ cool as it is his athleticism.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a player go through more than Blake Sims in four years,” Saban said. “He played on the scout team. He was a zone-read quarterback when he was the backup. I never saw a guy work so hard last spring through the summer when he had a chance to be the starting quarterback and learn how to take what the defense gives. As a coach I love to see guys go through what he’s been through and then have success.”
There are a lot of things that could be said about Saturday’s game. Dramatic is not one of them. Alabama drove 68 yards to a touchdown on the opening drive, led 21-3 at halftime, and to that point had outgained Missouri 252-108. The Tigers failed to get a first down on three of their first four possessions. When they did manage to dent Alabama, it usually was because of a desperation heave by quarterback Maty Mauk, not because it ever really figured out the Tide’s defense.
Missouri just wasn’t good enough. They teased the masses by converting three third downs and scoring the first 10 points of the second half to close to within 21-13, but then were hit over the head with a mother of all market corrections. Fourth quarter: Alabama 21, Mizzou 0.
“I was starting to think I didn’t do a very good job at halftime,” Saban said.
Then he regrouped any overthrew Missouri. And Eastern Europe.
Saban has been bothered that the SEC title game didn’t stir a lot of conversation. “All anybody has wanted to talk about is the final four (in the playoffs),” he said. “I was trying to get ESPN to acknowledge that we have an SEC championship game today instead of who we were playing next.”
It doesn’t matter. Alabama will win.
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