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Wasson: Alabama chokes away golden opportunity as Playoff dreams vanish
By David Wasson
Published:
Time after time in 2024, the Alabama Crimson Tide kept getting bailed out.
Gag away a huge lead against Georgia? No problem, just throw it to the 17-year-old receiver and survive. Cough up the No. 1 ranking in a generational upset at Vanderbilt? No problem, there are 12 teams in this new College Football Playoff. Lose at Tennessee in a fog of cigar smoke? No problem, the rest of the country keeps losing games so Alabama can reverse-engineer itself back into the SEC title game picture.
But Saturday in Oklahoma, as a 2-touchdown favorite against a fading Oklahoma team buried week after week in a new conference?
There is no turning back from this statement, which will echo the loudest across the country on a wacky day filled with crazy results across the Southeastern Conference …
Alabama is done. Finished.
It all dissolved in a dizzying 60 minutes of mediocrity against a Sooners team that was just hoping to get bowl eligible and to earn enough goodwill for Brent Venables to keep his job. Instead, Oklahoma beat up Alabama on both sides of the football to torch the Tide’s postseason hopes to a burnt-ends char.
Final score: Oklahoma 24, No. 7 Alabama 3. That sound you hear is the Crimson Tide’s hopes and dreams plummeting to earth at supersonic speed.
Someday, doctoral students will pen theses on just how magnificently the Crimson Tide coughed up their myriad chances in this season. You name the situation, and odds are Alabama has bungled it.
Saturday night, it was Jalen Milroe’s turn to throw away any chance at victory with a pair of errant throws early in the second half. Alabama was already on the ropes trailing 10-3 through the first 30 minutes, but got the football to start the third quarter. But that lasted precisely 3 plays – as Milroe attempted to complete a screen pass but instead threw it directly to Oklahoma’s Eli Bowen.
Oklahoma cashed that gift in 5 plays later with a 1-yard Xavier Robinson touchdown plunge to make it 17-3. But that was just prelude to the disaster to come. On the ensuing Tide possession, Milroe and Co. moved it to near midfield – only to uncork a 49-yard pick-6 to Sooners DB Kip Lewis that sent the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium crowd into a tizzy.
This wasn’t the Alabama team the nation was promised when Kalen DeBoer was plucked from Washington in the wake of Nick Saban’s retirement. This wasn’t the Alabama team predicted to succeed in a stacked SEC after DeBoer steadied a leaky recruiting boat. And this wasn’t an Alabama team that had a once-upon-a-time Heisman candidate in Milroe actively throwing the football to anyone with a Sooners uniform on.
No, this is an Alabama team – bullies of the SEC just last year – that instead was shoved around by an Sooners team who entered Saturday night with precisely 1 league victory. That rude entry into the SEC is now a distant memory, as Oklahoma completely neutralized Milroe’s rushing ability from kickoff to the 489th rendition of Boomer Sooner.
Even when the Tide did something right in the second half, what looked like an acrobatic 36-yard touchdown reception by Ryan Williams got wiped off the scoreboard by an apparently errant illegal touching penalty – instead turning the ball over to Oklahoma on downs and setting DeBoer off on a screaming rant toward every striped shirt he could find.
Ironically, the last time Alabama tumbled to a 5-loss opponent was back in 2007, Saban’s first year. Back then, a threadbare Tide team lost 21-14 to a 4-6 Louisiana-Monroe team in Tuscaloosa – a collar that hung around Saban’s neck for a couple years before the trophies started coming by the truckload.
But that team was filled with leftovers from a Mike Shula era that was constructed mostly to escape from NCAA probation and bridge the gap hopefully toward a brighter future. This Alabama team, stocked with 5-stars and future NFL talent? It got exposed yet again as a unit that will be forever known as underachievers.
There won’t be any trophies at all for Alabama this year, neither SEC nor College Football Playoff. Oh sure, the Tide still has the Foy-ODK Sportsmanship Trophy on the line in next week’s irrelevant Iron Bowl. And yes, there will be some Pop-Tarts or Duke’s Mayonnaise or Cheez-Its to entertain crimson-colored Tide fans/bored TV viewers alike waiting for actual Playoff games.
All that Alabama hope evaporated in the Norman night, mistake after mistake flowing freely from the visitor’s sideline and a lesser team whipping up on what was thought to be a superior team. What was left was nothing but a bunch of laundry that once dominated the SEC with the Saban Death Star for going on 2 decades, those clean all-white Alabama uniforms filled by a team that couldn’t handle the big stage.
Joyless Murderball is a chapter in history now, Alabama fans. Welcome back to the pack, where anyone can beat you on any given Saturday.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
