This is an opinion column.
The great reckoning is here for Alabama. Win now, against Auburn in the Iron Bowl, or lose its status of being the alpha king of college football.
The crown is sliding off the capstone. The gilded Tide teeters on the brink of what happened and why? What’s next and with whom?
How come and remember when?
There are two paths for Alabama on Saturday, and its crossroads are at the corner of Heisman and Donahue drives in Auburn. For college football in the Heart of Dixie, the theater of this moment could not be framed with any more angst and anticipation. It’s win or else for Alabama and Auburn is standing in the way. It’s an Iron Bowl kicking off at 6:30 p.m. in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The country will be watching while an entire state holds its breath and prepares to scream.
Some families are split down the middle. That’s me. My mom is a diehard Alabama fan. Dad is all Auburn. One brother chose Alabama. Another is an Auburn Man to the bone. One of my sons will put down his guitar on Saturday long enough to live through the Tide. He shared a room growing up with a brother who slept in Auburn bedsheets.
This is what we do in Alabama. This is who we be and why we are. From this cultural lodestone is where we make our stand, attracting iron that forges families. Every year, the spirits of our ancestors come to call, and we answer with the voice of generations.
Thanks to former Alabama coach Nick Saban, and perhaps a little managerial malfeasance by Auburn, too, the Crimson Tide has controlled the rivalry, and all of college football, for pretty much as long as anyone under the age of 20 years old can remember.
To be fair, it hasn’t been all Alabama.
But it took the single greatest season by a player (Cam Newton) and the single greatest play in a game (Kick Six) to steal a couple years for Auburn.
And for all the greatness of Alabama, which has done nothing less than shape modern-day college football and galvanize the SEC as the toughest conference in sports, the Tide is only 7-10 all-time at Jordan-Hare.
Now that’s a rivalry.
Is this Auburn’s time once again?
The brightness of Alabama’s past glory can never be diminished. Up ahead, though, the lights are flickering.
If Alabama doesn’t win this one, against an Auburn team with an interim coach and a conference record of 1-6, then Alabama is going to miss the 12-team College Football Playoff for the second year in a row.
Just three years ago, that was unimaginable.
That’s how quickly college football is changing due to rules put in place to governor Saban’s Alabama.
The transfer portal … NIL … Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12 for the SEC … the insatiable greed of the Big Ten … the democracy of an expanded playoff … all of those mechanisms were engineered to hold back the Tide.
Consider the madness of college football as the apogee of Alabama fights for footing atop this new world while staring off into the abyss of also.
Rivalry Week is upon us and upstarts like Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Oregon, SMU, Virginia and Indiana — yes, even the Hoosiers — are entertaining dreams of playing for a national championship.
Texas started the season ranked No.1 and then quickly fell all the way out of the poll by Week 7. Penn State was No.2 in the preseason AP Top 25. The Nittany Lions fired their coach after starting off 3-3. Clemson was No.4 and the Tigers go to South Carolina just hoping to remain above .500.
No.9 Notre Dame, despite losing two games to begin the season, is ranked one ahead of No.10 Alabama, and the Fighting Irish are all but a lock for the playoff but don’t have to play in a conference championship game.
James Madison could conceivably make the College Football Playoff and Alabama could be watching the Dukes from home. Wait, what? JMU plays football?
How is any of this fair?
The answer is that it’s not.
That’s college football. That’s life.
In Alabama, we live it every day, and now we stop together to watch a game that means everything all at once.
MAKE YOUR PICKS
Every week of the college football season, Joe gives readers six games to prove their college football geniuses. Time to make your picks for the 6-0 Challenge.
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