CECIL HURT: After Alabama loss, there is some hope for SEC teams
The calendar mandated a winter's afternoon in Baton Rouge on Saturday, but you couldn't tell it by walking on LSU's campus. Mild temperatures had the student population in shorts and T-shirts en masse.
Younger kids were playing in a bounce house set up as part of a pregame "fun zone," although it was obvious that the fun was going to remain outside the Maravich Assembly Center. The only down note in the entire tableau was a touching one, bouquets of flowers that still adorned the now-empty cage of the departed but beloved mascot, Mike the Tiger.
Everything else suggested springtime, emphatically. And the question it raised was whether, almost a week after Alabama lost a football game, there might be a similar air of rejuvenation and hope around every other SEC campus. It is basketball season but football springs eternal in this part of the planet.
The preponderance of opinion in the wake of Alabama's loss to Clemson last Monday has not been dire. There hasn't been a rush of journalistic coroners declaring the death of Alabama's dynasty, the way there was following the 2015 loss to Ole Miss. That frenzy remains hard to understand except as some sort of backhanded disrespect of the Rebels. Most rational people seem to understand that Alabama and Clemson were the two best teams in 2016 by a fairly wide margin, even if there was only a single second of separation between them.
Still, any loss at all by Alabama has to mean something to the team's trying to catch them and snap the still-active 16-game winning streak in SEC play. No one in the SEC seems poised to replicate Clemson's formula, which relied heavily on having the best quarterback in the country (that's not a slight, because I'd rely on him, too) and great receivers. If you have that, you'll probably be able to exploit Alabama's secondary next year unless some young Crimson Tide pass rushers develop in a hurry. But will anyone in the SEC have that? Will Florida State, awash in talent, have that in the season opener?
At this moment, Alabama's core group looks as strong as anyone else's nationally, if not stronger. The NFL draft will take three good players, but at positions where Alabama has solid returnees (cornerback being the possible exception.) Jonah Williams looks more than ready to shift from left tackle to right tackle to replace Cam Robinson and there are receivers on hand that can step up for ArDarius Stewart. Recruiting still isn't over and injuries still have to be rehabilitated, but Alabama will be close to a unanimous choice to win the SEC for a fourth straight season.
That doesn't mean everyone else will quit trying. If Clemson can do it, then Auburn and LSU are going to feel like they can do the same. The league in general is going to improve, almost by default.
The most serious question may be how Nick Saban responds. He appeared at the NFL press conference with his three players and spoke in an upbeat manner, although he didn't answer any questions. It may be February before Saban has another full-scale press conference and addresses issues like the imminent staff changes. So it's impossible to guess what his demeanor will be, aside from knowing that this is the man who says he "hates losing more than he likes winning." That, at least, hints that the fires will be stoked higher than ever. When the coach is hot, the team feels it first.
But in Baton Rouge and Auburn, Athens and Gainesville, there is hope again. That's what makes spring -- even a false spring in mid-January -- so great.
Reach Cecil Hurt at cecil@tidesports.com or 205-722-0225.
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