Sports Update

Alabama’s football team builds not off its successes but its failures.

It’s hard to tell which makes the Crimson Tide most formidable.

Yes, college football is about to creep back onto one of sports’ main stages and, yes, you will be watching Alabama again.

When last seen, the Tide fell 35-31 to Clemson on a last-second touchdown pass. That marked Alabama’s only loss of the season. The time to weep and moan, however, is long past.

At the Southeastern Conference’s media days, Bama coach Nick Saban made it plain what that defeat would mean when fall camp starts and the season commences. Such games, he said, open players’ eyes to what they truly want and how they can improve.

“I don’t want to waste a failure,” Saban said.

There is plenty to learn from any game, but Saban is making it clear that Alabama did not lose to Clemson because of that final TD pass.

“Everybody’s hurt by the fact that they lost, especially the way we lost that particular game on the last play of the game,” he said. “But it wasn’t the last play. It’s what led up to the last play. And I think our players realize that.”

Well, what led up to that play was a third straight SEC title, a season where only one league game was decided by single digits, 17 straight SEC victories and a chance to win a second straight national championship. But Clemson won the title with a late score against the nation’s best defense, so Bama will be driven.

If history is guide, Bama will be driven hard enough to run over everything and everyone its path.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman