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Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!
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Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 6:22 AM

Posting this article again as out of the seemingly 100s I've read, it still seems to capture the essence of the game better than most. Yes, there are a couple of statistical errors but given the article was written and posted less than 1 1/2 hours after the game, cut the author a break. If you read the first round, it's worth re-reading....ENJOY!!

=====================================================================================
THE NEW YORK POST, January 8, 2019, 1:15 am
by Mike Vaccaro
=====================================================================================
NICK SABAN's ALABAMA HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED A WHUPPING LIKE THIS


SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This was the bully finally getting his hide whupped, his nose bloodied and his jaw broken, his lunch money stolen. This was Sonny Liston lying on his back on the canvas of the Central Maine Youth Center in Lewiston, Maine, Muhammad Ali looking over him and shouting, “Get up and fight, sucker! Nobody will believe this!”

This was the Alabama Crimson Tide rendered helpless.

Rendered hapless.

This was Nick Saban as Roberto Duran in the closing seconds of the eighth round, staring at Sugar Ray Leonard from the floor of the New Orleans Superdome, meekly raising his gloved right hand and offering, “No mas, no mas.”

Thirty-eight years later, that was Saban’s Crimson Tide.

“No more!” they pleaded. “No more!”

The outcome wasn’t surprising, of course. Clemson had gone toe to toe with Alabama two years ago in Tampa, the Tigers had stalked the Tide all over Raymond James Stadium and finally passed them with one second left in the game, winning the national championship 35-31. Clemson is Alabama’s equal in every way: talent, coaching, performance. They are a two-team weight class all their own at the top of the sport.

But this was something else. This was something different, so much different from what Alabama has experienced in the Nick Saban Era. This was a one-sided, call-off-the-dogs, throw-in-the-towel manhandling. The final score was 44-16, and it felt so much worse than that, felt like Clemson hadn’t just shellacked Alabama but smashed its training table, too.

“We’re not playing well on defense, and we can’t get off the field on third down, and we have too many penalties,” was the way Nick Saban described it, and that certainly seemed to sum it all up perfectly … and that was at halftime.

That was also a few moments after he sent the world a hint that maybe he was as reluctant to scare up a fight Monday night as his players were, deciding to run out the final 41 seconds of the first-half clock without running a play despite three timeouts, despite being down 15 points at the time, despite owning a pinball-machine offense that, against almost every other team in the country, can score at will from anywhere on the field.

“No mas, no mas.”

“No more, no more.”

Later, Saban looked as shell-shocked as Liston and Duran, shaking his head, muttering about how what should have happened didn’t and what should have gone well wouldn’t.

“We had some issues,” he said.

“We got out-performed,” he sighed.

“They’re pretty good,” he conceded.

“We didn’t play well enough to win,” he admitted.

It was a masterful night for Dabo Swinney, the ex-Bama walk-on who owns one championship ring from playing for Alabama and now two more coaching against the Tide. It was an almost-perfect exhibition for Trevor Lawrence, Clemson’s true-freshman quarterback, who threw for 347 yards and two touchdowns and looked like he was having the time of his life pegging the rock to his array of sure-handed, fleet-footed receivers: Justyn Ross, Tee Higgins, Hunter Renfrow.

It was the perfect game plan married with perfect execution. Maybe that’s what it takes for Alabama to be humbled, for the Tide to be twisted into Prairie View A&M for a night. It sure has taken the rest of the sport a while to figure that out. Consider this: Entering the game, since 2011, Alabama’s record was — not a typo — 103-9.

In those nine losses, they had lost by two scores exactly twice — 26-14 to Auburn last year and 45-31 to Oklahoma in the 2013 Sugar Bowl. And both of those were one-score games in the fourth quarter. Alabama gets beaten only once in a blue moon.

It gets blown out about once a decade.

It got blown out Monday night. Tua Tagovailoa’s night started poorly, his second pass picked off and taken to the house by Clemson’s A.J. Terrell, and it ended on the bench, a symmetrical way to play out a year that had begun 52 weeks ago with him replacing Jalen Hurts and pushing Alabama to glory. This time, by the time Hurts took over, the game was gone, the season was gone, the title was gone.

The Tide had their lunch money stolen. They had their jaw broken, their nose bloodied.

“No mas, no mas.”

===============================================================================

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 6:29 AM

Thank you, awesome.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 6:31 AM

That was refreshing.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 7:38 AM

Great way to start a Friday! Thanks for posting this.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 7:46 AM

Think I will read it a second time. Go Tigers

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 10:34 AM

I had read it last year - worth reading again!

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 2:05 PM

It's sort of like watching the last 10 minutes of the Tampa Natty.....always good for a boost. And a nice break from all the other stuff going on these days!

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 12, 2020, 11:49 PM

Loved reading this again! Thanks for posting.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 13, 2020, 12:29 AM

Thanks for sharing. Excellent read.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 13, 2020, 1:30 AM

Thank you for posting. Nice to read something about football.

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Re: Take 3 minutes and read this - guaranteed to make you smile!


Jun 13, 2020, 1:48 AM

Thanks for sharing..

Ran into Bama fans in elevator at end of game, #### we’re they shocked

Go Tigers!

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