Worst Seat In The House: How to stay undefeated

College football has ended with the final two championship games. The FCS version saw North Dakota State drop EWU on January 5th and on Monday January 7th Number 2 Clemson upset Number 1 ranked Alabama in the College Football Playoff game.

The scoring started with a Clemson pass interception of Alabama QB and Heisman Trophy runner up Tua Tagavailoa. Tua didn’t throw many interceptions this year and one that was run back for a TD was really rare.

It was early and Alabama answered fairly quick with a TD of their own. One had to wonder when the scoring would end at that rate.

At one point Alabama trailed Clemson 14-13 with the ball at the one yard line going in for a score. But a false start moved the ball back another five yards. That penalty was costly and Alabama would have to settle for a field goal to put the Crimson Tide up 16-13. We didn’t know it at the time but that was the last time Alabama would lead and was also the last time they would score in this game.

When interviewed at halftime Bama Head Coach Nick Saban commented that Clemson was doing some things against the Crimson Tide that other teams tried with some success. He called it copycatting and appeared a bit bewildered.

I thought it sounded funny almost like someone was cheating. The one thing I like about sports is that there are no copyrights to offensive and defensive plays that are used by other teams. What is difficult is trying to implement the strategy in a short period of time and being able to do it with a lot of finesse.

Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney and his coaching staff put together a great game plan and certainly had to have watched the Georgia-Alabama SEC championship game to find out how the Bulldogs were able to jump out and get an early lead on the Crimson Tide. Alabama had access to that same tape and you would have thought that the Alabama coaches would have been able to counter those weaknesses if they were exploited by Clemson.

But they were unable to get back into the game. Clemson scored two more TDS and then merely needed to run out the clock and get first downs and they certainly did that winning 44-16.

Alabama was unable to run over Clemson like they did so many other teams this season. The Clemson coach and players were happy with their efforts and praised the coaching staff for getting them prepared. On more than one occasion the players said that they had just defeated the best team in college football. That to me is high praise for an opponent.

I watched a lot of the postgame shows and also turned over to the SEC channel that had spent so much time elevating the Alabama team to high status. They knew Clemson was good but the analysts had a hard time thinking Bama could actually lose to Clemson and their true freshman QB.

But Trevor Lawrence was great and would win the most outstanding offensive player award and well deserved. Lawrence heaped high praise on his line, the defense, his receivers and the coaching staff. It was definitely a team effort and one I enjoyed watching.

On the other side it was a different story altogether. The Bama players didn’t acknowledge Clemson as being a great team, “We didn’t make plays. They didn’t do anything special we figured them out we just didn’t execute.” Each player interviewed were basically the same in saying that they had in so many words beaten themselves.

In the game I saw Clemson dominated the boys from Alabama. But after listening to the Alabama boys talk they actually believed they beat themselves. Maybe I’m missing something but in that line of thinking it would seem that they were telling everyone that they didn’t actually lose the game they merely beat themselves. If that’s the case then it looks like Alabama is still undefeated!! But we all know better than that now don’t we?