Alabama football’s dominance continues to provoke fans to put on their tinfoil hats and opine about collusion and conspiracies.
The ongoing Alabama Football dynasty is one of the most impressive runs in sports history. The Crimson Tide has dominated the sport, winning five of the last nine national champions, and participating in every College Football Playoff since its inception in 2014.
There seem to be no signs of slowing down, as the latest version of Nick Saban’s joyless murderball looks even more frightening than past iterations. They’re the typical Alabama team – a great offensive line with a bevy of talented runners to run behind it, and a suffocating defense that takes away whatever you want to do offensively. The difference this year is they added a generational talent at QB to make themselves fully unstoppable.
Rival fans cannot abide the Tide’s dominance; they’ve never been able to during this latest run, but the tinfoil hats are becoming more and more prevalent about the SEC’s grand conspiracy to help Alabama win football games.
The conspiracy has been in place for years about the Red Elephant Club’s collusion with the SEC’s league office in Birmingham. I personally know dozens of members of said club, and the only collusion they are a part of is one involving Michelob Ultra’s and red meat.
Political analyst James Carville is the latest to cry foul about the SEC’s conspiracy to take care of its prized pony in Tuscaloosa. The whining comes on the heels of the controversial targeting call on LSU’s star LB Devin White in the fourth quarter of their game against Mississippi State.
Before getting into that he goes back to 2016 to show the SEC’s bias for…. Florida? The LSU/Florida game was moved from a Florida home game in 2016 to an LSU home game due to Hurricane Matthew. The game could have easily been played at the later date in Gainesville, but LSU’s athletic department refused, so to compensate, Florida was given consecutive home games in the series against LSU in 2017 and 2018. Somehow that’s a conspiracy against LSU.
And somehow, in a game that Alabama wasn’t even involved in, the SEC made a play to make sure the Crimson Tide have no problems against LSU in Baton Rouge. The refs were cognizant enough in the moment when the targeting call was made to, during the review, get Nick Saban on the phone to see what they should do? Do you even think the thought of the Alabama game in two weeks went through their heads?
It’s another in a long line of fans crying foul because Alabama is just too good at what it does.
The latest in a long line of the SEC, and at times state and local governments, doing favors for Alabama
They’ll show you Raekwon Davis punching a Missouri player, but not what prompted that response. They’ll complain about Davis not garnering a suspension, despite Davis sitting the first half of the Tennessee game.
They’ll show Mack Wilson’s hit on Jarrett Guarantano and complain that he should have been called for targeting like Devin White, even when he hit Guarantano in the chest. That play also happened in the first half, so it wouldn’t have affected his eligibility for the LSU game.
They’ll argue about a “Bama bump” in recruiting saying that recruiting sites would give Alabama commitments a star-rating bump to anyone who committed to ensure the Crimson Tide finished with the top-ranked recruiting class. That one lost its luster once the dynasty really started churning and everyone figured out that, in fact, Alabama does recruit the best players! Imagine that.
Georgia fans were especially vitriolic after the national championship game last season, accusing the refs of Alabama bias in a game where the Bulldogs blew a 13-0 halftime lead to a true freshman QB who came off the bench for his first meaningful snaps of the season. They talk about the iffy offsides call on the blocked punt and the missed facemask, but don’t talk about how Tua and a bunch of other freshman on Alabama’s offense, carved up the Georgia defense. Or how they gave up a 2nd-and-26 from the 41 yard line for a touchdown in overtime.
And when LSU fans are feeling especially tin-foil hatty, they’ll argue that the Alabama conspiracy stretches all the way to the Monroe County District Attorney’s office when weapons charges were dropped on Alabama’s Cam Robinson and Hootie Jones in 2016.
When you’re on top everyone wants to find excuses as to why they aren’t as good as you. It’s happened through every dynasty in sports history from the Yankees buying championships to the grand NBA officiating conspiracy to ensure a Lakers championship to time and time again the New England Patriots being accused of cheating. Some of those theories have some merit; the Alabama ones have none. There’s no concrete evidence of a grand conspiracy – just some screenshots of missed penalty calls that you could pull from any and every game, and a political analyst pandering to their base.
Speaking of penalties, if there was a grand Alabama collusion with the SEC, you would think Alabama would rank somewhere decent in penalties and opposing penalties per game. In fact, the evidence points to the contrary, if you took the few minutes it took to find a handful of screenshots of missed holding calls to look up statistical evidence. But you wouldn’t do that, though, because it would devastating to your argument.
In the last five years, Alabama has finished 127th or lower three times in opposing penalty yardage per game. They also haven’t finished better than 30th in fewest penalties per game.
The most damnable evidence against Alabama officiating bias was the 2016 season, a year in which Alabama led the nation in sacks and had one of college football’s all-time best defenses. Opponents were called for three holds all season long against an Alabama front seven that was loaded with future pros.
It makes total sense that the best players would get held the least, doesn’t it? Because no offensive linemen, when they are getting routinely beaten, would dare hold. If anything, Alabama has been given a detrimental whistle at times because refs feel bad for the opposition.
In 2010, the SEC, potentially inadvertently, gave six straight Alabama opponents a bye-week before they played the Crimson Tide. They may not have been cognizant of what they were doing, but that doesn’t happen completely by accident. It was a way of leveling the playing field for a team that had just gone through consecutive regular seasons without taking a loss.
If Alabama really had the SEC in the bag, then there would be nine-game conference schedules already and Hugh Freeze would have Butch Jones’ spot as an analyst.
The NCAA and the SEC have done everything short of forcing Alabama to play with 10 guys to give everyone else a fair shot, and opposing fans are still crying about a grand conspiracy because they are tired of getting their tails whipped year-in and year-out.
LSU, in particular, isn’t used to being on the wrong side of beatdowns, having lost to Alabama now seven consecutive times with an eighth looming in Baton Rouge in two weeks. The vast majority of them have forgotten the fact that Alabama has always dominated LSU, and Saban has just restored the traditional order.
Alabama has more than twice as many victories in this series as LSU does. Alabama, in particular, has dominated the series in Baton Rouge, boasting a 27-9-2 record on the road against LSU. This didn’t become a rivalry until Saban’s arrival sparked the hatred. Saban is 9-3 in 12 meetings against his former school, and LSU hasn’t been able to keep the deficit within single digits over the last three meetings.
Fueling LSU’s vitriol is Saban’s dominance in recruiting the state of Louisiana, routinely snagging top-tier talent right out of LSU’s backyard. From Eddie Lacy to Landon Collins to Tim Williams to Cam Robinson to Dylan Moses; these guys were destined to don the purple and gold and ended up in crimson and white.
LSU supporters have been the most vocal in claiming collusion between Alabama and the league office in Birmingham. It started with 2009’s Patrick Peterson interception that was ruled incomplete and then stood upon review. That would have obviously been the difference in a game that Alabama nearly doubled up LSU in total yardage.
It continued in 2016 when Jalen Hurts’ fourth quarter touchdown run prompted screenshots of a missed holding call, which was obviously the difference in a game that LSU didn’t manage a single point and were doubled up in yardage.
And now they’ve fully jumped the shark with collusion takes following Devin White’s targeting ejection and subsequent half-game suspension in a game that Alabama wasn’t even a part of. It gets crazier and crazier each time they dive down the rabbit-hole.
Let’s make one thing clear: I don’t think Devin White’s hit was targeting in any sense, but that doesn’t make it a grand conspiracy against LSU to keep their best defensive player out of the game. Bad targeting calls are made in nearly every single game now. Sometimes they’re upheld when they shouldn’t be; sometimes they’re overturned when they shouldn’t be; and sometimes they’re missed altogether. LSU is far from the first team to suffer from an iffy targeting call, but I’m not sure a fanbase has made a bigger deal about it than now.
The funny thing is that LSU actually winning would probably benefit the SEC in that it would open the door for two SEC teams to make the playoff for a second year in a row. A one-loss Alabama with only a road loss to LSU on its resume would have a playoff case if other teams falter, and a one-loss SEC champion LSU would obviously be a playoff team as well.
The fact of the matter is that LSU fans are preparing for the inevitable the only way they know how. They’re looking to find any and every excuse for why Alabama beat them once again, and that reason could not in any way just be that Alabama is better than LSU. No sir, that wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Deep down, LSU fans know the truth: Devin White playing or not playing isn’t going to have an effect on the outcome, but it does provide a convenient excuse to hang your hat on when Tua is chilling on the bench in the fourth quarter after hanging 40 on your heads in your own house.