Alabama Football: On repeat Championships, A-Rod and a young Crimson Tide

Alabama Football players listened to Alex Rodriquez Friday night, but did they hear? A-Rod offered a compelling story about the 2010 New York Yankees. That season the Yankees were the defending World Champions. But what Rodriquez described as a better Yankees team in 2010, failed to repeat.

The Alabama Crimson Tide is vulnerable to the same result. There are many reasons why. One is the nature of human complacency; an affliction Nick Saban has spent a career trying to negate. Another is college football history that shows how hard it is to repeat.

In the 85 college football seasons going back to the start of the Poll Era, there have been repeat National Champions just 12 times. In six of those 12 repeats, the National Champions were actually co-Champions one or both seasons. Only six times has a college football program been a sole, National Champion in back-to-back seasons.

The rare six are Minnesota in 1940 and 1941; Army in 1944 and 1945; Notre Dame in 1946 and 1947; Oklahoma in 1955 and 1956; Nebraska in 1994 and 1995 and the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2011 and 2012.

What about the Alabama Football National Championships in 1978 and 1979? The Crimson Tide was the sole National Champion in 1979. In 1978, the title was shared with Southern Cal.

Following A-Rod’s talk, Nick Saban provided some comments,

"He talked about it wasn’t the distractions, it was the attractions. That everybody got more attention. Everybody had more people pulling at them whether it was to speak at banquets or whatever, so it made it much more difficult to focus on the things that you needed to focus on to be the best player that you can be and to be the best teammate that you can be."

Even if every Alabama Football player is an avid baseball fan, probably none of them have much memory of Alex Rodriquez and the 2010 Yankees. There were almost all in elementary school, some as young as the second grade when the 2010 Yankees failed to repeat.

Fortunately, their head coach is the GOAT and hopefully, they know to pay careful attention to whatever he says. Mike Rodak of al.com provided some follow-up words from Saban.

"It (A-Rod’s talk) certainly fit our profile and our situation of where we are as a successful organization coming off a successful year. And everybody understanding that what we did last year will have absolutely nothing to do with how we perform and how we prepare this year.In fact, everyone that we play, we’ll be their target because we were successful a year ago. So everybody has to understand the level of commitment that it takes to be able to accept those challenges in a positive way."

Rodriquez did not have to wear the Crimson Tide shirt he appeared in. But as a longtime Alabama Football fan, doing so came naturally to the MLB great.