re: Portal & Roster Tracker (see first 2 posts for updated roster info) - PORTAL CLOSED

Hate he’s headed back to Tennessee. Anything that weakens them I like.

Nobody cares.

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Mac Jones won't be the last ever first time starting QB to win a title in the history of the sport.

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Agreed, because statistical outliers by definition will happen given enough data points. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on a statistical outlier if I were you, but to each his own.

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Bryce almost repeated it the very next year and the reason he didn't had nothing to do with him being a first year starter.

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Bryce was a miracle last 2.5 minutes of the Iron Bowl away from not even sniffing the playoffs. All the AU RB had to do was fall down inbounds, and we don’t make the playoffs. He also was very close to losing a few other games to bad teams that year, and all of that was with the GOAT as the coach. He was a lot closer to never making the playoffs in 2021 than he was to winning a NC (short memory Bama fans only remember the 2021 postseason and forget what happened in the regular season).



Here are just a few things that have changed in the short 4 years since Bryce was a first year starter:

1) the number of teams with a 20mm roster has increased somewhere between 500% and infinity/undefined (don’t think there was even a single 20mm roster in Bryce’s day, but maybe 1 or 2)

2) the price tag on individual positions, especially experienced QBs, has increased 300+%

3) the depth at Bama and every other top P4 team has gotten significantly more shallow. 2 and 3 deeps aren’t what they used to be for Bama, UGA, OSU, etc.

4) zero of the 8 teams who made the semis in the past 2 years had 1st year starters at QB

5) 3 of the 4 teams that made the semis this year have never made the semis ever before…2 of the 4 had never even made a playoff before. This wasn’t the case in Bryce’s day when the same 5-6 teams were cycling through the playoffs year after year with 1 outlier from time to time.

6) the team favored by over a TD to win the NC this year was the “losing-est” team in the history of college football prior to their current coach arriving 2 years ago. That kind of turnaround would never have been possible even just 4 years ago.

7) last years NC lost 2 games including a home game to an unranked 7-5 rival before tearing through the playoff field. This year a team playing for the NC was assumed by Vegas to not even make the expanded 12 team playoff before edging out ND who had -1600 odds to make it prior to the announcement. They have losses to SMU and Louisville. 4 years ago, both of those teams would have been laughed at in terms of winning a NC.

I could go on, but it’s actually quite funny to watch a couple posters claim “college football is ruined” out of one side of their mouth and “college football hasn’t changed much since Bryce” out of the other side. They don’t even realize they’re contradicting themselves and it’s great entertainment for some of us who pay attention.

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it’s actually quite funny to watch a couple posters claim “college football is ruined” out of one side of their mouth and “college football hasn’t changed much since Bryce” out of the other side.

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I’m in the “it’s changed a frickton since 2022 and it’s ruined” camp. I’ve seen NASCAR, the NBA, and to an extent, the MLB ruined by bad arrangements between talent, officiating, the executives, and the fans. I’d love to believe that College Football is different enough to survive, but at this point I’ll have to see it first.

ETA: boxing. (Maybe a few more influences on that one. )
Also, I’ve got burgeoning interests in the NFL, F1, and Golf. Old man sports are untouchable.

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I agree with just about everything you said but honestly we were very close to winning that Natty. I believe we had the lead in the 4th and shot ourselves in the foot in the red zone all night. BY made plays to win games all year that were closer than the experts thought.

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Yes, we were. But we didn’t lose it on a miracle comeback the way we won the IB to squeak into the playoffs. We never should have won the 2021 and 2023 IBs, but it was glorious watching us do it! (And the AU fan’s reactions )

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Statistically speaking we should have won those games comfortably and only jerdin hair voodoo cow pasture magic turned them into miracles.

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I get this perspective and before the game, sure, you could say that.

However, once we have around a 98+% chance of losing a game, there’s no other way to describe the win but a miracle that probably shouldn’t have happened. We could play both of those situations over again each year for the next 100 years and possibly not see a win in any of our lifetimes. The fact that it happened in back to back road games is absolutely insane.