Click here for linkBy Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports
1 hour, 14 minutes ago
AUBURN, Ala. – In the climactic Apollo Creed-Rocky Balboa fight scene in “Rocky,” the fighters clung to each other after the bell in mutual admiration and exhaustion.
Nick Saban and the Tide have proven they are the only team worthy of meeting LSU for the BCS title.
“Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” Creed mumbled.
“Don’t want one,” Rocky responded.
Yet they made “Rocky II,” and they fought again.
And now football imitates cinema.
Alabama and LSU punched each other’s lights out in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 5, and at the end of that 9-6 alley fight, neither battered side probably would have relished a rematch. But now they have one, Jan. 9 in the Superdome. The BCS national championship will be at stake.
It’s not official yet, of course. There is the formality of a final weekend of football to be played – a set of anticlimactic games that will put the lie to the bowl cartel’s assertion that every week is a playoff. When the least-impactful final full Saturday of games ever is over, the table will be set for the final frontier in SEC worldwide domination.
The league will win its sixth consecutive national title by default after wiring the title game with both entrants. If America already was fatigued by Dixie’s football superiority complex, well, sorry. Open wide for a large spoonful of some more.
LSU can contest the SEC championship game against Georgia wearing oven mitts and high heels, and it won’t prevent the Tigers from playing for the crystal football – even a loss to the Bulldogs should be survivable. That was assured when the No. 1 team in the land blew out No. 3 Arkansas on Friday in Baton Rouge.
And thanks to its 42-14 clubbing of Auburn, Alabama can sit out next Saturday and feel secure of its place in the title game. None of the other one-loss teams out there – Oklahoma State, Stanford, Boise State, Virginia Tech – can match the Crimson Tide’s resume. Nor can unbeaten Houston.
“I feel like we kind of showed the world we are national championship contenders,” Alabama linebacker Dont’a Hightower said. “I want to play anybody, but I would much rather play LSU in the national championship game.”
In one of those nonsensical twists that only the BCS can produce, the team that did not even win its division is more solid in its position in the title game than the team that beat it earlier this month. If for some reason Georgia ransacks LSU by 40 in the Georgia Dome, we can re-open the discussion. Until then, the debate is over.
Bama-LSU II. Bring it on.
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