CFP championship: The irony of labeling Alabama an 'underdog'

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

The underdogs are getting ready for college football’s national championship game on Monday, battling hard to defy the odds, seeing if they can pull off an upset, attempting to upturn the predictions, aware that everything is stacked against them.

Or … not so much.

Nick Saban is rarely wrong about things this time of year, but the Alabama head coach was undeniably, completely, wildly incorrect with one of his pregame statements this week.

When quizzed about how Georgia will go into the game as a 3-point favorite, Saban said this: "Being an underdog is being an underdog."

Except that it isn’t. There is being an underdog in the way that Cincinnati was an underdog against the Crimson Tide in the semifinal, the kind of underdog where no one thinks you have a chance and, realistically, they’re right.

Then there is the kind of underdog that Bama will be on Monday in Indianapolis, the kind where most people expect you to win, regardless of the spread, and if you do, it will be no surprise whatsoever. The kind where your team doesn’t feel anything like an underdog, and you’re such a dominant force in the sport that your opponents are sick of the sight of you.

That extends to Georgia, which, to confirm its Vegas favoritism, will need to perform very differently than it did a month ago in the SEC Championship, when the Bulldogs were ripped apart in a 41-24 defeat.

If there were ever going to be a time when Alabama was out of the picture, this was it. Saban’s teams have sustained the same roster-torching graduation and draft losses as other stud squads of recent note.

LSU won the national title behind Joe Burrow in 2020 and has been a sub-.500 team since the star quarterback and a bunch of his colleagues left campus.

Yet for Alabama, shearing the 2021 title-winning group of eight players drafted in the top 40 didn’t lead to a major drop-off. NFL rookie-of-the-year candidate Mac Jones was among them, but Bryce Young stepped up to clinch the Heisman and marshal the offense this season.

The normal rules don’t seem to apply in Tuscaloosa, where all the key positions have been filled with more-than-capable replenishments and where every time something goes wrong, it somehow seems to turn into a positive.

An October stutter against Texas A&M didn’t torpedo the campaign; it gave Saban ammunition to turn it into a learning experience and a warning against complacency.

A rival SEC team that goes gangbusters and looks unstoppable? Nope, Georgia’s surge has served as little more than a motivational tool, with Saban and his players admitting that they were boosted by the Bulldogs’ 6-point favoritism going into the SEC decider.

On the money line for the matchup at Lucas Oil Stadium, FOX Bet has Georgia at -150 and Alabama at +125. But Bama’s greatest strength might be the unshakeable confidence that courses through the program, beginning at the top.

"To me, the ultimate compliment to a competitor is to be a warrior, whatever you want to call them," Saban said. "That’s something we really try to get our players to buy into because it does create tremendous value for them."

Saban was asked this week what he thinks about expanding the playoff, something there has been increased public urgency for since the two blowout semifinals. He replied that he isn’t in favor of it and doesn’t necessarily see the point, which is thinly veiled code for saying it doesn’t matter because the Tide will smoke whoever crosses their path anyway.

Georgia’s possibilities for success will revolve around being able to control the game defensively, just like it did against every other opponent this season. The biggest problems Kirby Smart’s team faces are that Alabama’s tactical game-planning has a complexity unmatched in the college sphere and that the Tide's depth allows for so much versatility that an opponent’s pre-planning can go entirely out the window.

Cincinnati’s elite pass defense was relishing the opportunity to get stuck in during the semifinal and had some elaborate antidote schemes planned. So Alabama ran the ball constantly on its opening drives and set the tone for a different kind of game.

That’s the ability Alabama’s depth affords it, and it’s a huge reason that consistency has been maintained, despite the new-look personnel. And it's why, this time, the underdog doesn’t feel like an underdog at all.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.