Can I Get A Do-Over?

You don’t want to say it? Fine, I’ll say it.

Last night’s BCS National Championship game was a huge ball of disappointment.

Obviously, the disappointment comes from Colt McCoy’s injury. Considering he had Texas down on the goal line on their first drive of the game, it’s fair to think that the score wouldn’t have been 24-6 in Alabama’s favor for much of the game had he been able to go the distance. I’m not normally one to deal in definites like “oh, if this-and-this had happened, then that-and-than would’ve happened.” However, I think it’s pretty clear that if Colt McCoy plays 60 minutes, Texas wins the national title.

Consider this: Alabama’s quarterback, Greg McElroy, completed six passes all night. Yes, 6. S-i-x. The Tide gained a total of 263 yards, 205 of which came on the ground. Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson were fantastic for Alabama and I’m not taking anything away from their performances, but the Tide offense wasn’t exactly rolling last night (no pun intended). Texas turned the ball over 5 times (4 Garrett Gilbert picks and a Gilbert fumble), yet Alabama was only up three midway through the 4th quarter. Can you honestly tell me that you think McCoy would’ve turned the ball over even half that much? He certainly wouldn’t have thrown the shovel-pass-turned-interception-for-a-touchdown right before the end of the first half. As easily as Gilbert began moving the chains once he was able to clean the urine from the inside of his pants, do you think McCoy wouldn’t have been able to do the same thing for longer than the quarter that Gilbert did?

Another aspect of this is that Alabama held the ball for nearly 34 minutes. Not a huge disparity in time of possession, but it’s more than the totals; it’s the length of possessions. Here are the times of Texas’ drives in the first half after McCoy went out with his injury: 1:07, 1:44, 1:49, 0:55, 0:47, 1:30, 0:26. All told, the Longhorns had 10 drives in the game that lasted LESS than 1 minute and 10 seconds. The defense constantly had to run back out on the field after getting a less than 70-second break. This fed right into Alabama’s gameplan of running the ball with Ingram and Richardson, and going on prolonged marches down the field. Had McCoy played, it’s fair to say the defense would have been a lot more rested. Would that have slowed the running of the Tide’s two great backs? It’s hard to say for sure, but it would have been interesting to see. Especially since slowing the running game down would have forced McElroy to throw more often; and he was sacked 5 times in the game while, again, only completing 6 passes. I like Texas’ chances if they get to see more of that.

At the end of the day, Alabama is the 2009 national champion and the history books will show as much. Nick Saban and his team had a terrific season and should be respected as champions. For those of us who watched the game, there will always be a huge “what if” attached to the outcome, but that shouldn’t take away from the accomplishments of the Crimson Tide. Based on the results, Alabama is the best team in college football.

As long as Colt McCoy isn’t playing.

~~ Lank