Well, there was a football game last night, if anyone cared.
Jokes aside, the Miami/Indiana matchup was a surprisingly good one, especially for those that like to watch great defensive line play. Both teams’
DLs dominated most of the night, but things started leaking for both defenses with explosive plays in the 4th quarter. The Hoosiers wound up being unable to kill the clock at the end, and Miami got one last drive with a chance to win it all, but Carson Beck underthrew a shot to the endzone with a minute to go and Indiana picked it off, and that was that.
The Hoosiers are national champs. What a weird world.
While other teams were fighting for that prized #1 spot, Alabama’s now in the also-ran tier, ranked 11th by the USA Today rankings for next season.
Where are the Alabama Crimson Tide in USA TODAY Sports’ way-too-early top 25 college football rankings for the 2026 season?
Not at the top.
The rankings, unveiled ahead of Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship between the Indiana Hoosiers and Miami Hurricanes, see coach Kalen DeBoer’s team outside the top 10 at No. 11.
Sigh. The mighty have fallen. The Tide has pretty much burned up all of the benefit of the doubt from the last 15 years. Still, 11th isn’t too bad considering how they ended the season.
Considering Indiana’s recent success (and even some of Alabama’s recruiting this year), Nick Saban had some words on TV about his opinion on recruiting stars:
“We never ever looked at— and I know Cig doesn’t either— at how many stars a guy has because I think what you all need to do is look at who’s giving out the stars,” Saban said. “They don’t know their ass from a handful of sand when it comes to what a football player is. So why would you as a coach depend on somebody who’s not even a coach evaluating players to give them stars? I say all the time, Josh Jacobs had no stars, and Damien Harris was a five star. They were both really good players, don’t get me wrong, but Josh Jacobs was a first-round pick, and Damien Harris was a third-round. Josh Jacobs is still playing, and Damien Harris is not.
“So when you evaluate the players on your own in terms of the criteria of what you’re looking for at any position that fit in your system and the criteria of the kind of people you want to make the culture of your team what it is, which I think Cig has done a fantastic job of because it’s culture over system. If you don’t have a good culture, you’re never gonna execute the system no matter how good it is. That’s what they’ve done such a great job of at Indiana in my opinion. I’m just not a big fan of the stars. I never knew how many stars a guy had until signing day.”
I wonder if Nick has been catching wind about how negative Damien Harris has been about the Alabama program on CBS lately?
But seriously, for about 3-4 years now, I’ve been questioning just how much work the recruiting services are actually putting in to their rankings as compared to 10-15 years ago. The fan interest has dropped considerably with the 2018 early signing day, the transfer portal, and NIL shenanigans, and as such the services have dropped their staff considerably. On3 pretty much has one guy running the whole show, and that just doesn’t seem feasible to be able to study every high school in the country.
They’ve always defaulted to following around the Alabama’s and Georgia’s of the world to see who they are recruiting, and I think that’s only been amplified. For the Tide, I think it led to some massively overrated classes in the last few Saban years.
Speaking of Saban, we’re going a 6-part docuseries on him in the near future:
Nick Saban’s life and career will be at the subject of a six-part ESPN series coming soon, ESPN and Words + Pictures announced Monday.
The ESPN original series is in production and will feature more than 30 hours of interviews with Saban and more than 80 interviews with the people in his orbit during a coaching career that included seven national championships, per a release.
The documentary series will take place over six episodes. Timing and an episode schedule will be announced later.
“With my coaching days behind me, Ms. Terry and I have been doing a lot of reflection and realized we were ready to tell our story,” Saban said in a statement. “The team at Words + Pictures has encouraged me to really look back not just at my time at Alabama, but every stop along the way – and not just reflect on what happened but consider the process which made it happen. I interacted with a lot of players and coaches along the way and I’m happy to see that so many of them have contributed to this docuseries. There’s a lot to tell, and I’m excited to share it all.”
This is going to be awesome. Be ready to bring some tissues to dry your eyes, too.
If you missed it over the weekend, Will Anderson was an absolute force in the playoffs.
A first-team All-Pro selection in 2025 with 12 regular-season sacks, Anderson now has eight sacks in six postseason games, the most for an Alabama alumnus in NFL playoff history.
During Sunday’s game, Anderson moved past the six sacks of New York Jets defensive lineman Marty Lyons in seven playoff games and the 6.5 sacks of Kansas City Chiefs outside linebacker Derrick Thomas in 10 playoff games.
Anderson was an absolute monster and would have every right to murder his entire offense for wasting that performance. Still, he’s quickly becoming one of the very top defensive players in the entire NFL. Gee, who could have ever seen that coming (also Bryce robbed his Heisman).
