Week 13 - Bama - and reflections on the season

Before you even opened this post, I'm pretty sure you knew my thoughts about this week's game.  It's not that I really expected us to win, because let's face it, Alabama is really good this year.  But I always have at least a little bit of hope, and our defense was playing pretty well in the first half.  We also capitalized on a Bama turnover for a touchdown and got a special teams touchdown, which kept the score pretty close for a while.  Ultimately, though, you have to be able to move the ball on offense (and not commit turnovers yourself) in order to win a football game, and we just couldn't get it done.  At least we played better than we did in the Georgia game, though. 

At the beginning of this season, I said I'd be happy with an 8-4 record.  We lost 13 starters from last year's National Championship team.  In case you're counting, there are 11 players on the field at any one time, so we basically lost a full side of the ball and then some.  Obviously, the players we lost included a superhuman Heisman-winning quarterback and an Outland Trophy-winning defensive tackle, but we also lost good players at several other positions.  Our offensive line was decimated.  We played 26 freshmen this season.  Talk about a rebuilding year! 

We didn't quite make it to 8-4, but I'm okay with our 7-5 record.  Obviously, I wish we had done better, but I'm not apoplectic.  At the start of the season, Auburn was the underdog in 8 of its 12 games, so we beat that.  We'll go to a decent bowl game and hopefully end the post-season 8-5.  And our young players got a LOT of playing time this year, so hopefully next year they'll be more mature and be ready to contend for a national title again.  Of course, our quarterbacks have a lot of growing to do.  I know there will never be another Cam Newton, but I'd settle for another Jason Campbell.  :-)

Anyway, because Auburn had to lose to Alabama in order for there to be an all-SEC national championship game this year, those BCS voters damn sure better not put Oregon or some other pansy team in there with LSU.  An all-SEC national championship game will be the only good thing to come out of a loss to Bama.  Even though I hate Bama and am ambivalent towards LSU, 6 national championships in a row for the SEC is definitely a good thing.  The bad thing about it is that, once it's over, I have to wait approximately 8 months for the 2012 season.  Sigh.