Alabama football: Nick Saban and Tide have broken college football

Let’s face it — Alabama football has ruined the game. College football needs chaos, and Nick Saban has nearly removed that from the equation entirely.

People like winners, and Alabama wins. But college football is supposed to be fun. Dadgumit, Alabama has taken away the element of chaos out of the sport that makes college football such a blast to watch.

Part of the joy of college football is seeing an underdog two-star or three-star filled team beat up on a team full of five-star recruits. Nobody expected Iowa State to take down Oklahoma last year, or Iowa to dominate Ohio State. Clemson lost to Syracuse, for crying out loud and Troy embarrassed LSU. (To be fair, Syracuse is much, much better than anyone anticipated.)

And let’s not even get started on last weekend’s carnival of upsets.

It’s the random quality of college football that makes it so awesome. On any given weekend, literally, anything can happen. That’s not the case when Alabama plays. No team outside of the Top 10 really stands a chance against them, and that’s a little sad.

No, Alabama isn’t impossible to beat. They’ve only finished undefeated once under Saban. But they don’t lose to anyone unexpected. In fact, the Tide haven’t lost to an unranked team in over a decade. While that stat is undoubtedly impressive, it also goes against the entire point of competition. The underdogs never even have a shot when the Tide rolls into town.

Alabama never gets surprised. They always have a top recruiting class. They always dominate the SEC. One way or another, they always find a way to win. Alabama football has become predictable, and that kind of sucks. Nick Saban is awesome at his job. His team plays at a level that some NFL teams can’t even match.

That dominance doesn’t make them fun to watch. The Texas-Oklahoma game? That one was a barnburner. Watching Kentucky take down Florida for the first time in three decades? That was amazing. Watching Alabama? It’s become boring.

Kudos to Nick Saban—he will go down in college football history, and deservedly so. But college football will be better when another team knocks the Tide off their perch atop the sport once and for all.