Alabama football, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the real Armageddon

If you want to see real Armageddon before the world actually ends, it will happen on the college football gridiron and it will involve the Alabama football program.

I love college football. I love everything about it. Heck, I even love Alabama football fans. They’re fantastic entertainment and score high on the unintentional humor scale. However, they don’t take kindly to predictions involving the demise of their football team.

That said, I despise politics. No, wait. Maybe despise isn’t a strong enough word. I loathe politics with a hate that could fuel a thousand suns. I would rather dry shave my face with a cheese grater than enter into a political debate with someone.

But when recently-elected Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her assertion that the world will end in 12 years, and then my friend and CBS Radio personality John Kincade took that sound byte and ran with it, it got me thinking.

No, it didn’t get me thinking about recycling my empty Guinness bottles or trading in my Jeep for a Nissan Leaf. It got me thinking about what unlikely occurrences could actually happen before Ocasio-Cortez’s 12-year window to the end of existence.

I don’t care about your views on global warming or whether you lean towards the left or right side of the aisle. What I have in mind could be more earth-shattering than discovering the hole in the ozone was caused by beehive hairdo addicts in the 1960s.

Think about this, friends.

The Alabama football program upset in a College Football Playoff game…

Not by Clemson…

Not by Georgia…

Not by [insert next team name coached by Urban Meyer]…

But by a program out of the Group of Five conferences. (Sorry Jayhawks fans, despite the outward appearance, Kansas is a Power-5 program so you aren’t in this discussion.)

Too far-fetched? Think again. It could happen, and may very well happen in the next dozen years.

And we’re not talking about Alabama being upset in a shallow, meaningless regular season game against an opponent they may be looking past. This will be a program who has built something special, fought their way past playoff exclusivity, and then takes down the mighty Crimson Tide in one of the biggest games of the year.

Forget David and Goliath. This will be more like Maximus versus Commodus.

College football parity is becoming a real thing. The shackles of NCAA transfer bondage are already beginning to loosen, and soon programs who always felt they were on the outside looking in will begin to compete with the traditional powers.

A lot needs to — and probably will — happen between now and then, starting with the ability for players to transfer at will without having to sit a year, and even moving into players being allowed to have legal representation from an agent, the precursor to them being paid beyond a scholarship and stipend.

As the sport moves to become more of a private enterprise, more and more we’ll see 5-star recruits land in unlikely spots, more players transfer to boost visibility, title chances, and NFL Draft hopes, and more problems for the College Football Playoff Committee.

In short, when it comes to boosting talent on rosters, the hunted will become the hunters.

Still don’t think it could happen? Let me point you to 2008. Alabama was undefeated and ranked number one going into the SEC Championship game against Florida. Now, despite losing that game, chances are that in the modern postseason world, Alabama still would have been given a golden ticket to the College Football Playoff.

Know who else would have likely been there, probably matched up in a semifinal game against Bama?

Utah. Kyle Wittingham’s undefeated Utah Utes. The same undefeated Utah Utes who weren’t in what is now a Power-5 conference, sitting as members of the Mountain West Conference. The same Utes who snowed Saban’s Crimson Tide 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl that year.

Yeah, it can happen.

Who are the likely candidates to pull off this monumental upset in the next 12 years? Heck, it could be anyone. It doesn’t have to be UCF, Houston, or Boise State (although those are some of the more likely options). There are a lot of programs on the way up who could find the right formula to become the Villanova of college football.

It’s just a matter of time, and right now, time is not on the side of Alabama or any of the traditional college football powers.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can go on waving her red flags about global warming and the end of times. People in Tuscaloosa should be more aware of the potential end of Crimson gridiron dominance.