For just a moment, let’s just pretend that all the foolishness down on The Plains didn’t happen on Wednesday, that Tommy Tuberville is still sipping lemonade at Toomer’s and Bobby Lowder isn’t warming up his corporate airplane. Let’s discuss it later, because there’s a big college football playoff game coming up Saturday afternoon.

What? You didn’t know that the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision — what most folks still call “Division I-A” — had playoffs?

Well they don’t, at least not formally. I wish they did. But nonetheless, the Southeastern Conference championship game at the Georgia Dome is, in essence, the semifinals of the national championship. The winner will move on the BCS Championship in Miami. The loser goes to the Lard Bowl in Des Moines, Iowa, sponsored by the National Lard Marketing Council and Frito-Lay. (It’s really the Sugar Bowl, but who cares where the loser goes, anyway?)

So it’s not really a playoff game. That would be too simple and logical. But it just happened that way. Maybe it was part of Commissioner Mike Slive’s plan for global domination, but I doubt it. There are SEC diehards who think the conference championship should always be a semifinal of sorts, with the winner meeting the best-of-the-rest for the national crown.

Some years, yes; other years, perhaps not so much. But this is one of the “yes” years for the SEC.

Gary Danielson, the CBS analyst who will work Saturday’s game alongside play-by-play man Verne Lundquist, had an apt description of the Alabama-Florida matchup: “It’s Frazier vs. Ali.”

And the teams are like bruising heavyweights, but with distinctly different styles. Florida is the offensive juggernaut, a rarity in the conference this season, and excels on special teams (an Urban Meyer trademark). The Tide’s bulwark has been its defense, by and large. Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow is the star attraction for the Gators, while no one player truly seems to be the “bell cow” for Bama.

Both teams like to jump out to a big lead in the first quarter. As a result, the Tide did not even trail in a game until late in the season until Ole Miss scored the opening points of the seventh game of the season, and they’ve been behind only one other time, early in the overtime win over LSU.

So why is it that, despite Alabama’s top ranking in all the major polls, they’re 10-point underdogs?

Beats me. I know Florida has the eight-game winning streak, all by margins of 28 points or better. That’s not to say that the Gators won’t win by 10 or more this time out, but nine times out of 10 they wouldn’t. Point spreads aren’t for predicting games, they’re for splitting the wagering public into equal sides so the house gets its cut. What’s important to us is who wins, straight up.

My head tells me that the Swamp Things have an edge. Tebow really is as good as his press clippings, and he’s made good on his emotional promises to his team and fans after the upset loss to Ole Miss. The Gators are the only team in the SEC that has the speed and talent to overcome Bama’s defense.

But my heart tells me not to ignore the Nick Factor. Saban has brought the Tide back to the top of college football, and has his team believing that the title is their destiny. The individual efforts of John Parker Wilson, Glen Coffee, Rashad Johnson and Andre Smith are not to be ignored, but Saban has Bama winning as much with head and heart as with hands and feet.

Moreover, the coach has resurrected a moribund Crimson Nation. The fan base has again acquired the collective swagger that prevailed in the days when The Bear prowled the sidelines of Legion Field.

In other words, there’s no scientific reason to say Alabama will beat Florida in Saturday’s national championship semifinal playoff, but lots of psychological ones. And it will also prove that the Bowl Subdivision really would benefit from a true, honest-to-gosh playoff system, and not one that just sort of happened.

Alabama 31, Florida 28, says my crystal ball.

I hope my head isn’t too upset with my heart.



Robert Carter is the sports editor of The North Jefferson News.