The Night the Tide Turned for Alabama Under Nick Saban
The night of Sept. 27, 2008, was supposed to be a banner night for the 4-0 Georgia Bulldogs.
The team that entered the season with the No. 1 ranking had slipped to No. 3 despite beating Arizona State and South Carolina on the road but had the chance to make a statement against the eighth-ranked upstart Alabama Crimson Tide, then in year two under head coach Nick Saban.
ESPN's College GameDay was there.
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The Bulldogs wore black jerseys for the third time over a two-season span.
This was the game that would solidify Georgia—which was on an 11-game winning streak and had stars like quarterback Matthew Stafford, wide receiver A.J. Green and running back Knowshon Moreno—as a national power.
Instead, it became the game that launched Alabama into the SEC's 900-pound gorilla.
While unproved, the Crimson Tide entered the game ready to make a statement.
"They're wearing black because they're going to a [expletive deleted] funeral," strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran said during game preparation (at the 1:05 mark of the video below; contains NSFW language):
That's a bit aggressive, but considering where each program was, it turned out to be quite prophetic.
"We didn't know where we were as a team there in 2008 coming off a 7-6 season in 2007," quarterback John Parker Wilson, who was a senior on the 2008 Crimson Tide, told Bleacher Report. "We beat Clemson in a big game in the Georgia Dome to start the 2008 season, but still, Georgia was one of the top teams in the country, and we were still trying to find our identity. They came out with the black jerseys earlier in the week, and we used that as motivation."
That motivation worked.
Alabama jumped out to a 31-0 halftime lead on the heels of touchdown runs from Mark Ingram, Roy Upchurch and Glen Coffee, a 22-yard strike from Wilson to Julio Jones and a 23-yard field goal from Leigh Tiffin.
"It was an 'us vs. the world' mentality," Wilson said. "We go in there and were in the zone from the time we stepped off the bus. It was just one of those games where everything clicked."
The Crimson Tide absolutely demoralized Georgia right out of the gate, moving 80 yards on 11 plays for the game's first score. They followed it up with scoring drives of five, six, seven and eight plays during the game's first 30 minutes, all while holding Georgia to three drives that went three-and-out, forcing two fumbles and allowing just 99 total yards.
"Everybody was just a little bit overconfident," former Bulldogs tight end Aron White, who was a redshirt freshman in 2008, told Bleacher Report. "I think we lost some leadership from that 2007 team that was so good. We had some great players but not necessarily the leaders in place to keep everybody in line and remind us what made us so good in the first place."
After running roughshod through the Bulldogs, Georgia fans were understandably frustrated.
Former Crimson Tide offensive coordinator and current Florida head coach Jim McElwain left the press box at halftime and walked through the stadium to get to the locker room and found out just how angry Dawg Nation was.
"When we were walking out of the press box to go down at halftime, a couple of guys started throwing some stuff at me," he said on last week's coaches teleconference. "I thought, 'Wow, man, we must have done something right.'"
It wasn't on the field where the Crimson Tide proved they were a championship-caliber team; it was in that locker room.
Silence.
Instead of the coaches reminding players it wasn't over and to keep their foot on the gas, the leaders of the team took control to keep their own teammates in line.
"It was huge," Wilson said. "That's what any coaching staff would want. The coaches always say that it's a process and that they're trying to find leadership. We took the bull by the horns and didn't wait on anybody else like a coach or anybody else to do it.
"When you get the players to lead and coach themselves, that's a recipe for success."
Georgia found some life in the second half and at least made the final 41-30 score look respectable. Make no mistake, though: The game wasn't nearly as close as the shootout score indicated.
Alabama dominated the Bulldogs between the hedges, put to rest those black jerseys and announced to the world, "We're back."
"People forget that we were on probation with Coach [Mike] Shula," Wilson said. "The older guys, meshing with the young guys like Julio and Mark Ingram who produced so much, it was fun to be a part of the turning of the tide."
Instead of a defining moment for the Bulldogs, the blackout game was the night the lights turned on in Tuscaloosa.
Alabama has been shining bright ever since.
Saban and Co. ran through the regular season undefeated before losing to Florida in the SEC Championship Game and Utah in the Sugar Bowl. The Crimson Tide would then win three of the next four BCS National Championships.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Statistics are courtesy of CFBStats.com. Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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