Bluebloods Texas, Alabama battle for another title

BCS title blog

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? Nick Saban gave Mack Brown a cooler full of Alabama’s favorite, Dreamland Bar-B-Que. Brown presented Saban with a pair of genuine Texas spurs.

A quaint gesture, and a great photo op.

But the big prize — the one they really want — is that crystal trophy Brown and Saban posed with Wednesday, and it goes to the winner of the BCS national title game.

The undefeated Crimson Tide and Longhorns each will try to add another championship to their considerable pedigrees today, a meeting that will pit All-American quarterback Colt McCoy of Texas against the player who beat him for the Heisman Trophy, running back Mark Ingram of Alabama.

“When you start with 120 teams and it’s down to two, that’s about 12,000 players,” Brown said. “It’s a great honor for your players and your coaches to be in this game.”

This is a matchup of two old-line programs from Southern states — Roll Tide vs. Hook ’em Horns — where football, on many days, is bigger than life.

Saban, in his third year in Tuscaloosa, is aiming to bring the first championship to Alabama since 1992, when Gene Stallings — a protege of the late, great Bear Bryant — roamed the sidelines.

“We have a tremendous amount of respect for the tradition and the passion that our fans have,” Saban said.

But, he said, tradition doesn’t win ball games, and early in his tenure Saban even bristled against the so-called “culture of expectations” that surrounds most everything involved with Alabama football.

Since then, he has tried to ignore the hype and has gone about doing what he did six years ago when he led LSU to the BCS title: recruiting top prospects, coaching them up, trying to turn them into good players, students and citizens.

“The rest of it really doesn’t affect that,” Saban insisted.

Once derisively known as “Coach February” — the guy who could recruit all the talent in February but never cash in on it come January — Brown has won seven of his last eight bowl games, led the Longhorns (13-0) to one national title and can easily be mentioned in the same breath as their legendary coach, Darrell Royal.

Alabama (13-0) comes into the game as a 4-point favorite, in part because the Tide was so much more impressive than Texas in its last game.