Alabama Football: 14-team SEC win predictions and ‘happiness quotients’
By Ronald Evans
Will Alabama football fans be happy at the end of the regular season? Based on Brad Crawford’s crystal ball, at least two SEC fanbases should be happier than fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
A quick note; Crawford has detractors among the Alabama football faithful. Some accuse him of being anti-Crimson Tide. I cannot make that claim and even if it is true, such presumed bias applies more to others.
Crawford recently published a game-by-game prediction for every SEC team’s regular season. There is no value in critiquing Crawford’s predictions because they are just one of many preseason opinions that may or may not prove to be accurate.
What can be done is to take Crawford’s predictions, team, by team, and project how happy each fanbase will be at the end of the season. As a comparative guide, I suggest a ‘Happiness Quotient’ that ranges from 0-5. At zero is ‘the sky is falling’ unhappiness. At five a fanbase is as happy as possible.
In the list below, no team is predicted to have a fanbase with a happiness quotient of zero.
Alabama Football and other ‘Most Happy’ SEC fanbases
- Georgia Bulldogs – Happiness Quotient 5, after Georgia cruises through its easy regular season schedule at 12-0
- Texas A&M Aggies (9-3) – Happiness Quotient 4, because of Jimbo saving his job (and saving the Aggies buyout money) with nine regular season wins, including a win over Alabama Football in College Station
- Alabama Crimson Tide (10-2) – Happiness Quotient 4. This one is tricky. Alabama fans will hate losing to the Aggies (if Crawford is correct), but with a win over LSU, the Crimson Tide would advance to Atlanta and possibly into the CFB Playoff. For Alabama fans, not making the Playoff would plummet the Happiness Quotient to near zero.