On Christmas, Championships and other Alabama Football blessings

Being an Alabama football fan is somewhat akin to living through frequent years with multiple Christmas Days. What makes Christmas special is the giving; far more so than the getting. Alabama Football gives its fans joys aplenty. All of us should be immensely thankful. For the most part, we are. Except for lapses on social media and message boards during, and for a few hours after some games. Some of those diatribes become ugly.

Those of us with a few years (make that quite a few) of Alabama Crimson Tide fan experience can sometimes forget what we know. As in, even with the greatest program in the history of college football, there are bleak times. Thanks to Nick and Terry Saban, dozens of football staff and scores of players, there has been extraordinary joy since 2008.

As fans, do we sometimes get greedy? Yes, we do and at the same time, no we don’t. Every season’s expectations of championships did not start with Nick Saban. Though they have ebbed and flowed throughout Crimson Tide history, championship expectations go back to a Rose Bowl win on January 1, 1926.

Just part of being an Alabama Football fan

Generations of Alabama football fans have been imprinted with those expectations as children.  We never outgrow it. The expectations are simply part of being a Crimson Tide fan.

Not even the darkest times when Alabama football struggled to beat bad teams, did fans cease to believe those times would end with a Crimson Tide return to glory. And they always have.

To the rest of the world, we are at best, arrogant and at worst, insufferable. Few of us care the least bit what fans of other programs think. We can admit some claims the Alabama football fanbase has been spoiled by success are not without merit.

A few of us – if this season’s Crimson Tide, comes up short of another National Championship, will label the season a failure. Beating Auburn and LSU and Tennessee and winning an SEC Championship is for many of us, not enough.

In a way, no achievement is ever enough. At least it isn’t for very long. If (when) the Tide wins in Indianapolis, not many hours into Jan. 11, we will be obsessing about a three-peat. Many of us won’t smell the championship roses any longer than will Nick Saban.

Perhaps such passion is unhealthy? If it is, none of us care.

On that three-peat – should Nick Saban pull off a Championship feat in a rebuilding season – the college football world best hide next season, when Saban is going to possibly have his most talented team.