The Alabama Crimson Tide football program is on a roll. Yahoo Sports' Jay Busbee asks, "Is Kalen DeBoer's Tide reviving Saban-era feeling of inevitability?"
In Busbee's interesting piece, he also talks about the Alabama Crimson Tide and arrogance. The word has been assigned to the Tide's football program going back to the Paul 'Bear' Bryant years. It fits. Alabama football fans don't deny it. Other fanbases hate it. The greatest college football program of all time has earned arrogance many times over. So be it, as long as it is restricted to Alabama fans.
Players cannot afford to embrace arrogance unless doing so is balanced by a reality explained by Nick Saban. That reality is that there is no continuum of success. Earning success requires unrelenting diligence. A recent comment by Ty Simpson is an example of how to effectively navigate the program's perception of being arrogant: "Prepare like you’ve never won, perform like you’ve never lost."
The other word,' inevitability', should be purged from the thoughts of Crimson Tide fans, players, and football staff. There is no inevitability in college football. The closest big-time college sports ever came to inevitability was UCLA men's basketball run under John Wooden. The Bruins won the NCAA Tournament in 1964 and 1965 and won it seven consecutive years from 1967 to 1973. They won it again in 1975. But not even 10 NCAA Tournament Championships in 12 years cemented UCLA as inevitable.
Alabama Crimson Tide 'Back'
Alabama's current roll may indicate the Crimson Tide is 'back'. It is too early to say. It is not that the 2025 Alabama Crimson Tide has no vulnerabilities. It clearly does. Countering the vulnerabilities is how much the Crimson Tide has improved since the Florida State game. Kalen DeBoer knows his team is not a finished product. This week, he challenged his players, "I challenged the guys, and they believe it, that the world has not seen Bama's best yet."
Jay Busbee's piece includes a reminder that "parity reigns in college football." It would be most difficult to find anyone who disagrees. Busbee added the perspective that "some programs are more equal than others." Alabama has long had one of the 'more' programs, and the Alabama Crimson Tide is poised to show the 'more' has not vanished under Kalen DeBoer.