Opening Day Will Prove Worth Later

With so little known about the teams, the events of college football’s opening weekend tend to garner a greater importance than they might actually merit.Sprinkled among Saturday’s expected routs were a handful of upsets that may look more or less surprising in another few weeks, when we’ll know if the preseason hype accorded certain programs was warranted. Such was the case with Pittsburgh’s home loss to Bowling Green, one of the better mid-major conference clubs. Pitt was rated in the preseason polls after a season-ending upset of West Virginia last year and some strong recruiting classes, but the Panthers have yet to post a winning season in Dave Wannstedt’s three years. The weekend’s biggest upset saw no. 17 Virginia Tech fall to East Carolina. That result may also be viewed differently if Virginia Tech struggles all season while East Carolina competes for a BCS bid out of Conference USA.Yesterday, Rutgers posted another such result, falling to Fresno State, 24-7, in a loss that might look a lot less shocking as the year wears on, as Fresno is vying to be the third-straight team to garner a BCS berth out of the WAC.But one introductory statement was too loud to be ignored: the 34-10 whipping no. 24 Alabama put on ninth-ranked Clemson. The neutral-site venue, Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, assured an evenly split crowd. But even a color-blind observer would have had no trouble distinguishing the orange-clad Clemson backers from the Tide supporters in red — the Clemson fans were the ones who were silent from the beginning, such was the domination by Alabama.Clemson’s pratfall put the capper on an awful weekend for the ACC. In addition to Virginia Tech’s loss, Maryland struggled at home against lower-division Delaware, and North Carolina had to rally to beat another Championship Subdivision school, McNeese State. Virginia proved little more than a speed bump for visiting USC, and North Carolina State was shut out, 34-0, by South Carolina to open the season Thursday night.Yet despite all the evidence suggesting the weakness of the ACC, Alabama’s performance was so convincing that the Tide won all the chicken-vs.-egg debates about whether it was Alabama’s dominance or Clemson’s ineptitude that was most responsible for the one-sided result.Nick Saban was hailed as a savior when he bolted the Miami Dolphins after just two seasons to take over at Alabama. He brought with him a championship pedigree, having led SEC rival LSU to the BCS title in 2003, and the reputation as the type of recruiter that could make Alabama relevant again in the SEC. He also received a precedent-setting contract, one that he was constantly reminded of as the Tide finished just 7-6 in his first season — including a loss to Louisiana-Monroe.Many college football observers felt it would take Saban several years to return the Tide to anything approaching their former glory. They had been passed by not only archrival Auburn, but also by LSU in the SEC West, to say nothing of Florida and Georgia in the East — all of which would be competing with Saban over the same fertile recruiting territory.Saban’s recruiting prowess has already been seen. His 2007 and 2008 classes at Alabama have ranked 10th and first, respectively, according to Rivals.com. Recruiting rankings are highly subjective, but anyone who watched Alabama’s heralded freshman and sophomores play critical roles in the destruction of Clemson would be hard-pressed to argue the lofty status awarded the Tide. Freshman running back Mark Ingram — son of the former Giants Super Bowl hero of the same name — carried 17 times for 97 yards and a two-point conversion. Alabama’s most-hyped recruit of 2008, wideout Julio Jones, also made an immediate impact with four catches for 28 yards and a touchdown.Even with the impressive performances of the young skill-position players, Alabama won this game by dominating both sides of the line of scrimmage. It was the physical whipping by both sets of linemen that bodes best for Alabama in SEC play. The defense completely contained Clemson’s stellar tailback tandem of James Davis and C.J. Spiller, holding them to a combined 20 yards on eight carries. With sacks factored in, Clemson managed exactly zero yards on the ground.In a college game that is increasingly moving toward the spread offenses such as the one Urban Meyer deploys at Florida, Alabama’s approach is a throwback. The Tide’s offensive linemen average better than 300 pounds, and they deployed plenty of twotight end, power running formations against Clemson. The results were spectacular: 239 yards rushing and possession for 41 minutes, 13 seconds. Saban is one degree of separation removed from the Bill Parcells coaching tree, having coached under Parcells’s disciple, Bill Belichick, with the Cleveland Browns. Even though his current job is to guide the Miami Dolphins out from under the mess Saban left them in, Parcells had to smile at the game plan against Clemson, which mirrored the Giants’ successful approach against Buffalo’s vaunted “K-Gun” in Super Bowl XXV.Despite the lopsided win, Saban was trying to dampen the enthusiasm of the Tide’s enthusiastic fans. He knows that Alabama could be vastly improved and still finish in the middle of the pack in the SEC West, where LSU is the defending national champion and where cross-state rival Auburn owns a six-game winning streak over Alabama. Those two schools won their openers by a combined 75-13, though against opposition than the presumptive ACC favorite.As for Clemson, as bad as the Tigers looked, and as many times as they have failed to live up to high expectations in recent seasons, the ACC is likely still theirs for the taking. After all, it’s never smart to read too much into opening weekend.Mr. Levine is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.

Opening Day Will Prove Worth Later

Opening Day Will Prove Worth Later

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