Kay Ivey burns Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal in national championship game tweet
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey masterfully burned Georgia Governor Nathan Deal in a tweet Sunday evening ahead of Monday’s National Championship football game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Georgia Bulldogs. Last Thursday, Deal declared Friday, January 5th a day of celebration for Georgia Bulldog fans, calling it “UGA Football Friday” and encouraging fans to wear red and black in support of the Dawgs. I’ve proclaimed January 5 as “#UGA Football Friday,” & I encourage fans far and wide to represent @FootballUGA tomorrow by wearing red and black. #keepchoppingwood #ATD pic.twitter.com/2zDfayeCb6 — Governor Nathan Deal (@GovernorDeal) January 4, 2018 Across the state line, Ivey choose not to issue a similar proclamation in Alabama. When New York Times reporter Alan Blinder pointed out her decision, Ivey issued the ultimate clap back: In Alabama, we don’t celebrate making the national championship. Only winning it. Talk to y’all on Tuesday. #RollTide https://t.co/zTbnG12Y0D — Kay Ivey (@kayiveyforgov) January 8, 2018 Ivey’s tweet is the latest example of the Alabama-Georgia rivalry heating up between politicians. Last week, Alabama 1st District U.S. Congressmen Bradley Byrne and Georgia 3rd District U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson on Thursday announced a friendly wager on the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. Ferguson staked Chick-fil-a on a Bulldog victory, and Byrne risked Alabama seafood for a Crimson Tide win. Their wager was followed by Alabama 7th District U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell and Georgia 10th District U.S. Rep. Congressman Jody Hice making a similar wager. At stake is local barbecue and a statement on the House floor supporting the winning team.
Crimson Tide in the college football playoffs; Auburn faces another unbeaten in Peach Bowl
A really imaginative tweet went out Saturday night. “With the noon (Eastern) time college football playoff show, will there even be church services in Alabama, or just all morning prayer vigils? Houndstooth blazers required.” With the noon time college football playoff show, will there even be church services in Alabama, or just all morning prayer vigils? Houndstooth blazers required. — drgraves-UGA Adm. (@drgravesUGA) December 3, 2017 Those prayers of Crimson Tide fans were answered Sunday morning as Alabama was awarded the fourth and final slot in the college football playoffs. Coach Nick Saban’s squad will face CFP No. 1-ranked Clemson in a national semifinal at 7:45 p.m. CST on New Year’s Day in the Allstate Sugar Bowl at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. “Dabo (Swinney) has done a fantastic job with that program,” Saban said of the Clemson coach. “They’ve been consistently successful and this will be the third year we’ve played them in the playoff. I know our guys will be ready to play and will have a tremendous amount of respect for Clemson. We’ll have to play our best game of the year to have a chance to be successful against them.” The No. 2 Oklahoma Sooners and No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs will play in the other semifinal game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, at 4 p.m. in the Rose Bowl. Georgia punched its ticket into the playoffs by beating Auburn 28-7 in a rematch of the Tigers’ 40-17 victory three weeks prior. The national championship game is at 7 p.m. on Jan. 8 in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. All three games are on ESPN. Alabama Athletic Communications reported Sunday that Tide Pride members have until 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 4, to submit requests for playoff semifinal and championship game tickets. Each participating school will receive 13,000 tickets for the semifinal and 20,000 tickets to the championship. Other than the tickets allotted to the schools, the game is sold out. All requests made by University of Alabama constituency groups (Tide Pride, lettermen and faculty/staff) will be evaluated for all games following the request deadline. For the Allstate Sugar Bowl, all confirmed ticket requests will be shipped to customers via UPS, with a planned shipment date of Friday, Dec. 15. For the championship game in Atlanta, all confirmed requests are planned to be sent via mobile ticket (email and Ticketmaster app download) delivery with a planned send date of Thursday, Jan. 4. Ticket prices are as follows: semifinal Allstate Sugar Bowl: $275 club and $175 reserved; national championship: $675 (club), $575 (100- and 200-level seats) and $475 (300-level seats). The ability to request tickets does not guarantee tickets. If demand is greater than the allotment of tickets received, refunds will be given based on Tide Totals priority points. Lettermen should note that, if requests received exceed the lettermen allotment, requests will be filled based on last year lettered. UA faculty/staff should note that, if requests received exceed the faculty/staff allotment, requests will be filled based on years of service. “We’re extremely pleased for our team, our players, our coaches and all the people who work hard here for us,” Saban said. “I’d like to congratulate the other teams that will have the opportunity to participate in the playoff as well as the teams who were considered and had potential to be selected. We are really pleased and happy to be a part of the college football playoff again this year.” Since its inception in 2014, Alabama is the only team to appear in all four playoffs, and has appeared in the top five of every poll put out by the selection committee over the past four seasons. The Crimson Tide and Clemson will meet for the 18th time in the history of the series that dates back to 1900. Alabama owns the series advantage, 13-4. The two most recent matchups came in the 2016 and 2017 national championship games. Alabama rallied to defeat the No. 1 Tigers, 45-40, to capture the Tide’s 16th national championship in the 2016 game in Glendale, Arizona. The Tigers returned the favor with a come-from-behind 35-31 win in the 2017 championship in Tampa, Florida. No. 7 Auburn faces American Athletic Conference Champion and CFP No. 12 Central Florida in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl’s 50th anniversary game. That contest is set for the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and will be nationally televised by ESPN at 11:30 a.m. UCF is making its first trip to the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, while Auburn will make its sixth appearance. Auburn has a 4-1 record in the game, with its most recent appearance resulting in a 43-24 victory over Virginia in 2011. “We couldn’t have asked for a better matchup to celebrate our 50th anniversary,” said Gary Stokan, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl CEO and president. “To have college football’s only undefeated team square off against the first-ever team to defeat two College Football Playoff No. 1-ranked teams in a season makes for an extremely compelling game.” Auburn’s Gus Malzahn will coach in the bowl game with a new contract. He has agreed to a seven-year deal to remain at the school after a strong late-season rebound, The Associated Press reported on Sunday. Complete financial details were not immediately available but the AP reported Malzahn will make more than $7 million in the final year of the contract. Other Southeastern Conference teams headed to bowl games are: Citrus Bowl presented by Overton (Orlando) – LSU vs. Notre Dame at noon on Jan. 1 on ABC. Academy Sports & Outdoors Texas Bowl (Houston): Missouri vs. Texas at 8 p.m. Dec. 27 on ESPN. Belk Bowl (Charlotte): Texas A&M vs. Wake Forest at noon on Dec. 29 on ESPN. Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl (Nashville): Kentucky vs. CFP No. 20-ranked Northwestern at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 29 on ESPN TaxSlayer Bowl (Jacksonville): Mississippi State vs. Louisville at 11 a.m. on Dec. 30 on ESPN. Outback Bowl (Tampa): South Carolina vs. Michigan at 11 a.m. on Jan. 1 on ABC. UAB got a jump on Selection Sunday. The Blazers released their postseason plans last week, announcing that they’ll play Ohio in the Bahamas Bowl at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 22 on ESPN. In other state-connected bowls: R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: Troy is the other state team that is
Alabama football starts atop AP poll for 2nd straight year
Alabama is No. 1 in The Associated Press preseason college football poll for the second straight season and third time in five years. The Crimson Tide, coming off a last-second loss in the national championship game that left it No. 2 to Clemson in the final Top 25 of 2016, received 52 from a panel of 61 media members. Ohio State was No. 2, edging out No. 3 Florida State and preventing the first 1 vs 2 opening game since the AP preseason poll began in 1950. Alabama opens the season against the Seminoles in Atlanta on Sept. 2, just the fourth opener involving top-five teams and the first pitting teams ranked in the top three. Southern California starts the season at No. 4. Defending national champion Clemson begins the post-Deshaun Watson era at No. 5. Click here for full list of rankings. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
SEC faces strong challenges as college football’s top dog
When LSU’s Ed Orgeron matter of factly declared the SEC as “the best conference in the United States,” he was mostly preaching to the choir in the league’s backyard. But the Southeastern Conference’s once-undisputed status as college football’s top league is facing strong challenges from both the ACC and Big Ten despite Alabama’s best efforts. The Crimson Tide certainly remains formidable as ever, if not invincible, at the top. Beyond that, there’s plenty of uncertainty — and in some cases mediocrity — in a league that won seven straight national titles from 2006-12. “If you’re trying to hit a moving target on this date and say, ‘Is the SEC the best league right now?’, the answer is no,” SEC Network analyst and talk show host Paul Finebaum said Tuesday at media days. “I think it’s probably the ACC. It’s marginal and you can come back and say, ‘Yeah but…’ “Results matter, and the SEC has lost two times in the last four years to the ACC.” Clemson toppled the Tide on a last-second touchdown at the national championship game in January. Florida State claimed the title with a win over Auburn four years earlier. The ACC isn’t the only league mounting a challenge to the league’s supremacy. The Big Ten finished with four teams ranked in the Top 10 in the final AP poll. The league did go 3-7 in bowl games. The ACC enjoyed an 8-3 postseason romp while the SEC’s 12 bowl teams managed just a .500 postseason record. The SEC sent a four-loss Auburn team to the Sugar Bowl, its most prominent non-playoff game. The Tigers lost 35-19 to Oklahoma. Still, SEC teams are faring well on the recruiting trail, with half of the top 12 signing classes in the 247Sports composite rankings this year. Alabama was No. 1 and Georgia only two spots back. For Finebaum, the difference comes down to the head coaches. The ACC has national championship coaches in Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher, along with ex-SEC head men Mark Richt (Miami) and Bobby Petrino (Louisville). The Big Ten starts with Ohio State’s Urban Meyer, who led Florida to a pair of national titles, and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh topping the pecking order. The days of a Steve Spurrier-Saban-Meyer SEC coaching Mount Rushmore are past. “What do you have now in the SEC? I mean, after Saban, who’s next?” Finebaum said. “There’s no clear second-best coach. And even if you come up with that answer, it’s not concrete.” What is concrete: The ACC held the upper hand last season. That league went 10-4 against SEC teams and won four of five postseason games. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey gets philosophical when asked whether the league has slipped, even quoting a longtime manager of Manchester United. “That’s the nature of competitive endeavors — they’re very close,” Sankey said. “There’s a quote from Sir Alex Ferguson that I read that says in a fiercely competitive endeavor things aren’t decided until the bitter end. So you accept that. But I don’t at all think that’s a representation of slippage. “Our commitment is high, but you’re in a competitive endeavor. You want to win them all, but sometimes you don’t.” There does seem to be a wider disparity between ‘Bama and the rest of the league than among the top conferences. Alabama has won 17 consecutive SEC games, all but three by double-digit margins. A 54-16 dismantling of Florida in the SEC championship game would indicate a sizable distance between the Tide and the rest of the league, though rival coaches are mostly unwilling to measure that gap. “I don’t know the gap itself,” said Gators coach Jim McElwain, a former Alabama offensive coordinator. “I do understand this, they’re right now at the top. It’s up to the rest of us to go get ’em.” It’s clear the rest of the league — like the vast majority of programs — has been lagging well behind Alabama. Georgia coach Kirby Smart, a former Tide defensive coordinator, said the key to closing that gap will be not just recruiting top players but developing them once they arrive on campus. “When you do both, that’s when you got something special,” Smart said. “And I think every team in this conference is trying to play catch-up in regards to that. “I think each one’s getting closer, and we’d like to see that gap closed through recruiting.” And maybe, as a result, once again widen the gap between the SEC and other conferences. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
FiveThirtyEight ranks Alabama strongest college football team in history
Alabama beat Florida in Saturday’s SEC conference championship game, securing a spot in the College Football Playoff, and becoming the greatest college team of the past 80 years. The Crimson Tide needed to defeat Florida by 11 or more points to surpass the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers for No. 1, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Elo power rating. In fact, they whipped the Gators by 38 points, putting ’Bama ahead of any team in the history of The Associated Press poll, which began in 1936. For many college teams, the pinnacle of this year’s Elo ranking coincided with the end of the schedule. However, in the case of Alabama, the Crimson Tide needed to be both Washington and in the winter of the Clemson-Ohio State game to become this year’s national champ. If they didn’t, says Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight, Alabama would’ve peaked a bit too soon. Nevertheless, FiveThirtyEight.com notes that Nick Saban can now boast that his 2016 Alabama team is now the strongest team in the modern college football era.
Playoff pairs: Unbeaten Alabama to face Washington, Ohio State against Clemson
In the end, true chaos never came to college football this season. Four teams that started near the top of the College Football Playoff rankings will play for the national championship. Alabama will face Washington in one semifinal and Clemson meets Ohio State in the other. None of them were ranked any lower than sixth since the selection committee started ranking teams in early November. Even after a wild finish to championship Saturday, selection Sunday went pretty much as expected. The committee stayed with the same top four it picked going into championship weekend, leaving out No. 5 Penn State even though the Nittany Lions won the Big Ten title game and beat Ohio State earlier in the season. The Buckeyes (11-1) are the first team to reach the playoff in its three-year history without winning their conference. The unbeaten Crimson Tide (13-0) is in the playoff for the third straight season and is the top seed for the second time. They will play the fourth-ranked Huskies (12-1) in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta on Dec. 31. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m. ET. Alabama has played Washington four times previously, twice in bowls and not since 1986. Huskies fans were holding up signs at games late in the season, proclaiming “We want Bama.” “Sometimes you got to be careful what you wish for,” Washington coach Chris Petersen said on ESPN. “I didn’t hold up that sign.” Saban and Alabama will be trying to win their fifth national championship in eight seasons, and second straight. Washington’s last national title came in 1991, when the Huskies were No. 1 in the final coaches’ poll. Petersen, the former Boise State coach in his third season with Washington, has never faced Saban and said he does not know him well. “I feel like I know him, I see him on TV so much,” Petersen said. No. 3 Ohio State is making its second playoff appearance and No. 2 Clemson (12-1) is in for the second consecutive season. The Buckeyes and Tigers will meet at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, on Dec. 31. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. ET. Ohio State won the first College Football Playoff after the 2014 season and Clemson lost to Alabama in last season’s championship game. Ohio State and Clemson have played twice before, both in bowl games. The last time was after the 2013 season. The one difference from last week’s top four and the final one was Clemson and Ohio State switched spots. So the Tigers will wear the home jerseys in University of Phoenix stadium instead of the Buckeyes. Selection committee chairman Kirby Hocutt said the decision came down not to Penn State and Ohio State, but the Nittany Lions (11-2) and Pac-12 champion Washington. The Huskies’ only loss was to Southern California and its nonconference schedule featured FCS Portland State, Rutgers and Idaho. Penn State played Pitt, Temple and Kent State in the conference and lost to the Panthers. The Nittany Lions also were beaten by 39 at Michigan in their last loss. Penn State finished the season on a nine-game winning streak to make a strong closing statement. “Had Washington had a stronger strength of schedule I do not think that conversation would have been as difficult,” said Hocutt, who is also the Texas tech athletic director. The selection protocol does not require the committee to pick conference champions or the winner of head-to-head matchups. “You can make arguments for and against so many teams,” Penn State coach James Franklin said on ESPN, adding his team was appreciative of the Rose Bowl bid it will receive. The rest of the New Year’s Six bowls were also announced: — Florida State (9-3) will play Michigan (10-2) in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30. — Southern California (9-3) will play Penn State (11-2) in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2. — Auburn (8-4) will play Oklahoma (10-2) in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 2. — Western Michigan (13-0) will play Wisconsin (10-3) in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 2. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
