What Did We Learn from the Alabama-Texas Championship Game?

Another college football season has come and gone. So what have we learned?

We learned that Nick Saban can win a BCS championship, go and fail in the NFL, come back and win a national championship with another school in the same conference as before. Quite impressive.

We found out that the sum may sometimes be greater than its parts. In this case, the sum is Colt McCoy, whose injury on the fifth offensive snap in the title game changed the course of the entire championship game and will forever be implanted as the one that got away for the four-year starter.

We realized that Mark Ingram deserved the Heisman trophy. His 100-plus yards and two scores in the championship game carried the Alabama offense, especially when the passing game never truly got off the ground.

Ingram’s second touchdown put the game out of reach and had ‘Bama smelling the crystal ball.

We saw that players don’t quit. Texas’ Jordan Shipley never took a play off and it showed as he hauled in 10 catches for 122 yards and two second-half scores. He almost single-handedly brought the Longhorns back from an 18-point deficit.

We found out that college sports may be the most exciting of all. With a 24-6 lead at halftime, many people switched the dial away from ABC as the game seemed out of reach, and McCoy was a wounded duck.

But out of nowhere a freshman becomes poised and gets his team to within a field goal on the biggest stage in college football.

We saw that gimmicks have a larger chance of failing than working. On 4th and long deep in their own territory, Saban calls a fake punt pass, which inexplicably results in an interception and a subsequent Texas field goal.

There’s a difference between gutsy and dumb, and that play call was plain idiotic.

We learned that sometimes coaches trust their players too much. That was Texas coach Mack Brown’s offense, calling a shovel pass with his newly-inserted QB with less than 30 seconds on the clock in the first half. The pass was intercepted and returned for a score, increasing the deficit and making Brown scratch his head.

Take a knee or run the ball, but that play should’ve never been called.

Big 12 run defense is overrated—maybe even nonexistent.This was proved last night as the Crimson Tide pounded the rock all night against the nation’s “top-ranked defense.” I wasn’t sure they even ran the ball in the Big 12, and the SEC’s best back took it to them and made such stats seem overly meaningless.

The SEC just keeps on rolling. I’m a Big Ten guy and even I have to admit that football down south has been far more superior in the BCS era. The SEC has the same number of national championships in the BCS era (6) as all other conference combined! Saban and Florida coach Urban Meyer won four of those six titles.

And finally, we learned that sometimes the bigger story is not what actually happened, but what could have happened.