re: Nick Saban would never allow his team to become thin at CB

2012 is obvious: the defense let Bama roll all over them, but the unlucky tipped pass and catch by Conley was something that went against us and cost us the game right there.

In 2008, our defense let us down when we needed it. Nothing really unlucky about that season unless you call being in the same division with Tim Tebow unlucky. Florida was dominant and won it all. Hard to compete against that team, but even if Florida was "down", a loss to Alabama and Tech would have kept us out of the championship game anyway. The defense giving up 45 points to Tech really clinched it, though. Our defense sucked, which is why Willie M eventually got canned. Can't be competitive in the SEC long-term with a crappy defense.

2007 was just bad due to losses against SC and TN. SC was a close game and their defense was stout that game. Another poor defensive showing against TN and lack of production on offense did it for us there. We were able to do enough to win the rest of the games, but we just couldn't pull out wins there. If we beat TN, we probably wind up going to the MNC game.

2007 was just us keeping ourselves out. There's nothing that could have helped us, short of 3 or 4 teams losing at the end, but that would have been really lucky, indeed.

Not every season is left up to a lucky play or schedule or opponents dropping the ball, but we've had our moments where we could have gone to a MNC if things had gone our way (outside of us taking care of business on the field). 2002 could easily have been the year for us to win one, but we were left out with one loss to Florida. We didn't catch a break there, where other teams with one loss got in (Alabama, LSU, Florida, Auburn, etc.)