Defending a national championship in college sports is a daunting task which requires nearly every factor to work out in your favor. You can only have players for four years, and the best players usually leave a year or more early to earn money at the professional level. You need a top-rate coach, a superb recruiting system, and a tradition with which you can attract players and fans. The Alabama Crimson Tide football team seems poised to be able to pull off a repeat this season. The Tide dominated college football last season, bulldozing through football’s toughest conference, the SEC, en route to a 14-0 record and a victory in the national championship game over Texas. Their powerful running game, combined with the nation’s top defense, was an unstoppable force as the y defeated 6 ranked teams over the course of the season, including Tim Tebow’s No.1 Florida Gators. All that the dedicated Bama fans, which includes the 85,000 that attended one of the spring scrimmage games, want to know now is if their guys can repeat. Well, they certainly have all the pieces to say yes.
Alabama football starts with Nick Saban. The already legendary coach had to himself to the diehard Crimson Tide faithful, and has done a superb job so far, which includes having one of the top recruiting classes each season. The Tide offensive, which if not prolific was still excellent last year, returns nearly every single weapon in its arsenal. The headliner is quite obvious in junior running back Mark Ingram, last season’s recipient of the Heisman Trophy award given to the best player in the country. Ingram was Alabama’s first ever Heisman winner, and he earned it, rushing for 1658 and 17 touchdowns last season. Alabama also has an excellent backup back in sophomore Trent Richardson, who recorded 751 rushing yards and 8 TDs last year. Another key factor in the Tide’s favor is the return of starting QB Greg McElroy, who threw for 2,500 yards and 17 TDs with just 4 interceptions in his first year as a starter last season. McElroy has two high quality targets to throw to this season in juniors Julio Jones and Marquis Maze. Jones, considered a top 5 receiver in the country, was hampered last season by injuries and double teams. But with the emergence of Maze as a threat, as well as their powerful running game, Jones has a better shot to have a breakout season and be the superstar that many believed he would become.
Analysts say that Bama’s Achilles heel this year will be that formerly tenacious defense. Really? How could last year’s best defense be the Tide’s weakness? Well, they are losing the majority of their starters, 9 to be exact, including most of their defensive leaders. Gone to the NFL are linebacker Rolando McClain (1st round-8th pick), CB Kareem Jackson (1st round- 20th pick), CB Javier Arenas (2nd round), monster nose guard Terrence Cody (2nd round), DB Marquis Johnson (7th round), and DE Brandon Deaderick (7th round). Nevertheless, you can never underestimate an Alabama defense, especially not a Nick Saban defense. The Crimson Tide do return a trio of juniors that could all go in the 1st round of the 2011 NFL Draft. Linebacker Dont’a Hightower was the best returning defensive player for the Tide before last season, even better than McClain by many accounts, but he suffered a knee injury that ended his season. Saban expects a full recovery and thinks that Hightower will be the nucleus of his defense, as well as more than a worthy replacement for McClain. Defensive end Marcell Dareus should terrorize offensive linemen as one of the toughest D-lineman to block in the nation, and safety Mark Barron should improve on a stellar sophomore campaign in which he led the SEC in interceptions and passes defended and was second on the team in tackles.
As usual, Alabama’s regular season schedule has some rough spots. They host a tough non-conference opponent in Penn State in Week 2. While the Nittany Lions may have lost star QB Daryll Clark, they return superstar running back Evan Royster and leading receiver Derek Moye. Week 4 presents a challenging road game against Arkansas and their prized QB Ryan Mallet, who returns along with leading receiving Greg Childs. The next week they take on Florida, a talented but well depleted squad. The Gators lost the majority of their starters on both sides of the ball, including QB Tim Tebow, who is considered by many to be the greatest college football player of all-time. The only other game that should provide a true challenge during the regular season is when the Tide go to Baton Rouge to take on always loaded LSU. In terms of the rest of the country, the top competition for Alabama appears to be Ohio State and Boise State. Ohio State returns stellar and experienced QB Terrelle Pyror along with a great defense, and Boise State returns all but one starter from a team that went undefeated last season. The biggest obstacle for the Crimson Tide will be history. AS previously mentioned, defending a title in college football is an unlikely phenomenon. In fact, only two teams have been able to repeat as consensus national champions in the last six decades, Oklahoma in 1955-56, and Nebraska in 1994-95. Obviously, it takes more than being a special team to repeat, and the folks down there in Tuscaloosa have a lot more.
