2013 National Signing Day Champions- The Alabama Crimson Tide

After the season (and last four years) they’ve had, it is somewhat expected that the Alabama Crimson Tide would be able to recruit top-notch players. Coach Nick Saban has applied his process to recruiting as Alabama tops the list for 2013.

With four five-star and 13 four-star prospects, Alabama is looking to be just as competitive in 2013. Five-star prospect linebacker Reuben Foster, whose creative Auburn tattoo certainly made an interesting statement, has surely had the most colorful road to national signing day (this including the tattoo and taking an unofficial visit to Alabama during his official visit to Auburn, and thus recommitting to Alabama).

Still, Foster is sure to be quite the force for the Tide. A No. 16 recruit overall, Foster will fit right in at Alabama. His size, quickness, and ability to tackle is essentially the tenacious defensive qualities that Alabama is known for having. I predict that Foster will play a big role in Alabama’s defense in the future.

Gaining four-star defensive end Dee Liner (what a fitting name, might I add) in the home stretch help put the Tide on top.

So, what does all this mean for the season to come?

It means Alabama’s chance for yet another National Championship bid is looking to be more and more attainable. With a more mature defense that is sure to be a lot more stingy in years to come, Alabama shows no sign of stopping the process.

2012 National Champions- Alabama Crimson Tide

The players who comprised Alabama’s roster Monday had nothing to do with the Crimson Tide’s gut-wrenching loss to Notre Dame in the 1973 Sugar Bowl, nothing to do with a similarly tough loss in the 1975 Orange Bowl and nothing to do with the other three losses in its six previous tries against the Fighting Irish.
Ask coach Nick Saban, and he’ll go one step further. This year’s team had nothing to do with last year’s national championship or the one Alabama seized in 2009.
His conversations with the team about this very subject were recounted constantly throughout the 2012 season. There was a similar message conveyed before Monday’s BCS National Championship.
“He told us we haven’t done anything yet,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said. “The legacy was going to be determined by the end of this game.”
These players — recruited exclusively by Saban’s staff and groomed in a program where expectations were re-established as “national title or bust” upon their enrollment — had everything to do with avenging those haunted shortcomings to the Fighting Irish and enhancing the mystique of one of the greatest eras in Crimson Tide history.
And they did it without a hint of drama.

Alabama’s 42-14 victory on a breezy Miami night at Sun Life Stadium was a recreation of the runaway train routs that filled the space between its nail-biting thrillers against LSU, Texas A&M and Georgia.
It’s the first time any team has won consecutive titles during the BCS era. The last time a team won the BCS title game by 28 or more points was 2005, when USC routed Oklahoma, 55-19 in the same stadium. The last team to win three titles in a four-year span was Nebraska (1994-97).
Yet it remained a challenge to find anyone from Alabama’s team to say it was a dynasty — better known as “the D word” among Crimson Tide players who refused to acknowledge it before or after Monday’s dominant performance.
“This one feels great,” senior defensive end Damion Square said. “It’s unique. It’s this one, down in South Florida. The one in New Orleans, that was in New Orleans. I’m going to take all of these to heart.”
For some Crimson Tide players, such as quarterback AJ McCarron, who etched his name next to more records with yet another outstanding championship game performance, it was their third title.
For sophomore safety HaHa Clinton-Dix — who was all over the field in one of the best games of his career — and a number of other underclassmen who embraced elevated roles in 2012, it was the second.
For true freshmen such as wide receiver Amari Cooper and running back T.J. Yeldon, who shined Monday much like they did throughout the regular season, it was the first.
By the logic Saban applied throughout the year, this national championship was this particular team’s first and only. And it wasn’t any easier than the previous two.
“People talk about how the most difficult thing is to win your first championship,” Saban said. “Really, the most difficult is to win the next one because there’s always a feeling of entitlement.
“The commitment that these guys made two days after the we played LSU in the national championship game to be a team, to set a goal to accomplish something of significance is really special for what they were able to accomplish.”
Notre Dame, rejuvenated under third-year coach Brian Kelly after decades of mediocrity, helped make this championship victory appear to be the easiest of the three. The Fighting Irish were frazzled in every aspect of the game — running routes too close to the sideline, missing tackles, muffing punt returns — and the Crimson Tide was there to pounce on every opportunity.
It took the Alabama less than 3 minutes to strike first. It was the kind of drive that would replicate itself three more times during the Crimson Tide’s dominant first half.
McCarron loosened up the Notre Dame defense with a 29-yard pass to Kevin Norwood before he let Eddie Lacy and the Crimson Tide offensive line do the rest. Lacy ran through a gaping hole up the middle to score a 20-yard touchdown.
“I could feel it in warm-ups,” said McCarron, who threw for 264 yards and four touchdowns. “I always feel like if I hit my first pass, it’s going to be a good day.”
Six minutes later, the Crimson Tide did it again. Set up by more of Lacy’s running, McCarron found a wide-open Michael Williams in the back of the end zone with a 3-yard pass to cap a 10-play, 61-yard march down the field.
After ending a first quarter that saw it outgain Notre Dame 202-23, Alabama extended its lead to 21-0 on the second quarter’s first play with a 1-yard Yeldon touchdown run. The Crimson Tide capped the half with a 71-yard drive that ended with a whirling Lacy landing in the end zone after he caught and ran with an 11-yard McCarron screen pass.
It was 28-0 before halftime against a team that allowed more than 20 points just once all season.

“That’s how we practice,” linebacker Trey DePriest said. “It’s an everyday thing. We go against our offense and you see what they just did.”
McCarron’s third-quarter touchdown pass to freshman Cooper went for 34 yards and put him alone at the top among Crimson Tide quarterbacks with 48 for his career. It also capped a 97-yard drive and staked Alabama to its biggest lead of the game, 35-0 — an advantage that was sliced on the ensuing drive by Notre Dame quarterback Everett Golson’s 2-yard touchdown run.
The McCarron-Cooper battery hooked up one more time in the fourth quarter for a 19-yard touchdown — one of the final marks on the Crimson Tide’s history-altering night.
“We’ll take a couple of days to celebrate this,” Saban said. “Then it will be time to start building toward next season.”

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