Each week, Sporting News college football writer Matt Hayes will take questions for his Mail Bonding column:
Q: I keep thinking Alabama will hit the point that every team at the top hits, and eventually fall. Like USC, Miami and Florida over the years. When do you see this happening?
— Henry George, Franklin, Tenn.
Look at the three programs you mentioned, and see the common denominator: they couldn’t sustain greatness because they couldn’t control entitled players, and couldn’t find elite quarterbacks.
Now look at Alabama.
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The one thing that Nick Saban has done better than Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer and Larry Coker is convince (most) every player that he’s no bigger than the team as a whole. Because when individuals begin to stray from that foundation – or in this case, Saban’s vaunted “process” – bad things happen. Be it locker room chemistry, problems away from the field or finally – and fatally – refusing to hear the same message over and over.
Take those problems and add to them a sudden drop in talent at the most important position on the field, and that combination translates to a fall from the top.
All three of those aforementioned programs fell off the map after a significant drop in talent at quarterback (players that followed Matt Leinart, Ken Dorsey and Tim Tebow) and numerous locker room issues.
So how does this formula fit with 2014 Alabama?
The Tide lost their last two games of 2013, and have had an unusual amount of off-field issues this offeason. Then there’s the biggest question of 2014 : new quarterback Jacob Coker.
On the outside, the combination of events since Chris Davis returned a missed kick for a touchdown in the Iron Bowl looks dangerously similar to the breakdowns at USC, Miami and Florida.
None of those three programs, though, had a dominant personality like Saban to hold it all together. Carroll always seemed distracted with who he was to USC (and the NFL); Coker didn’t have a demanding personality and philosophy, and Meyer allowed an small minority of elite players control the team majority.
But there’s one thing Saban can’t control: if you struggle at the quarterback position, you struggle in big games.
Q: Steve Spurrier says playing ECU is a bigger deal than playing the bottom feeders in the Big Ten. What’s the difference with the lower level Big Ten teams and the SEC teams?
— Nick Foster, St. Paul, Minn.
Spurrier being Spurrier, that comment was seen as him taking shots at the Big Ten. But everyone is missing his point.
Spurrier was not only defending ECU on the South Carolina schedule — he was defending the right of the non-Power 5 conferences to continue playing games against the South Carolinas of the world.
Look, there’s no difference between the bottom rung of the SEC and Big Ten, or ACC and Pac-12 and Big 12. They’re all lousy. In fact, by the end of last season ECU could have beaten every one of the bottom three from each of the Power 5 leagues – as could many of the non-Power 5 teams.
There’s a thought process circulating – and many coaches don’t like it – that when the Power 5 receive legislative autonomy, we’ll move one step closer to those schools playing each other exclusively and further damaging the Group of Five conferences’ ability to grow and sustain. That drastic step is more than likely years down the road, if at all.
There are too many moving parts to it (who makes the schedule; what metrics are used for schedule strength, etc.), and frankly, too much negative publicity for a group of conferences that has already pushed through significant change to the sport on and off the field.
Q: What’s more important, the right coach or the right players?
— Dustin Franks, Miami, Fla.
Any coach anywhere – at any level – will tell you players win games.
Simple enough, right?
Then how do you account for what Jim Tressel did at Ohio State, or Carroll at USC, or Meyer at Florida – and over and over and over throughout the college landscape?
This is the biggest difference between the NFL and college football. In the NFL, players are the rock stars. In college football, coaches are the difference-makers.
You simply can’t argue against how Carroll completely turned around the fortunes of USC, which always recruited well and fed players to the NFL. He won a BCS national championship in Year 3 (Associated Press title in Year 2).
Can’t argue against Tressel (won NC in Year 2) or Meyer (won NC in Year 2) or Saban (won NC in Year 3; game away from playing for it in Year 2) or Bob Stoops (NC in Year 2).
All of those men stepped into places that historically recruit well and have stocked rosters, but for whatever reason, weren’t winning big.
Look at all of those coaches before those men at those respective schools, and not one is a head coach today: Paul Hackett (USC), John Blake (Oklahoma), John Cooper (Ohio State), Ron Zook (Florida), Mike Shula (Alabama). In fact, only Zook worked again as a head coach (Illinois).
Those are just big-name jobs; there are many others throughout FBS that fit the same mold. While players clearly win games, there’s little doubt that the right coach in the right situation can take players from winning games to winning championships.
Q: I really like what my Hokies have on defense. I think we have a good enough group to go into Ohio State and win that game by slowing down all of those Buckeye weapons. Your thoughts?
— Kim Frazier, Greensboro, N.C.
The defense, as important and potentially good as it is, won’t be the difference for Virginia Tech against Ohio State. Michael Brewer will.
As much as we hear about the failure of VT’s special teams the last two seasons, and how the defense hasn’t played well in big games, there’s one overriding reason why the Hokies have taken a significant step back the last two seasons: Logan Thomas.
You are simply not winning critical games – and in some instances for VT the last two years, games in general – when your quarterback continues to give away the ball.
Thomas threw a whopping 29 interceptions over the last two seasons, a number that not only stunted the growth of the offense, but put more pressure on an overworked defense to make stops on many short-field situations.
Brewer, a graduate transfer from Texas Tech, played sparingly the last two years as a back up and completed 41-of-58 passes for 5 TDs and 0 INTs. His completion percentage of 70.6 is nearly 20 points higher than what Thomas averaged his last seasons at VT.
Will Brewer put up similar numbers for Tech? Probably not, but based on history alone, he can’t do much worse than Thomas. If Brewer takes care of the ball and the VT defense is typically salty, the chances of the Hokies winning that game are much greater than the previous two seasons.