MIAMI GARDENS, Florida. – At the end of a long, arduous, bizarre, and uncomfortable season of college football, we finally got a bit of a normalcy as the final seconds of the clock elapsed on Monday night at Hard Rock: Alabama, raising another national championship after winning in a historically dominant fashion.

Only a few spectators remained to watch the celebration, and a fraction of the approximately 14,000 fans were allowed into the facility subject to all restrictions. On any other year, the field is rallying with friends, family, media, photographers and event staff for a grand celebration that spans 10 depths along the makeshift stage. On Monday evening, a lone player patted snow angels in fallen scraps of paper while his teammates only hugged.

Alabama’s victory in all of it seemed like an inevitable end, of course, as the sport’s most dominant coach pooled the most dominant team with the most dominant players. For those just watching Monday’s College Football Playoff presented by AT&T against Ohio State, thinking they’re Probably Just watch a competitive game, they watched Gallery # 13 showing why Buckeyes had no chance.

There was a Heisman Cup winner Devonta Smith Completely owning the state of Ohio, he snatched several game records before halftime and would have smashed more had he not dislocated a finger on his right hand. There was a run back Nagy HarrisDredging through Buckeyes with this force, their collective will inevitably shattered. Everything drove quarterback Mac Jones, In which he orchestrated another nearly flawless attacking performance while, yes, he scored his own championship numbers along the way.

The scarlet tide cannot be stopped during the season. They are unstoppable in the 52-24 championship performance and no one will soon forget it.

„For me, this team has done more than almost any team,“ said Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, who won his seventh national title. „He played 13 games, and is unbeaten with all the turmoil we’ve faced this season. I think there’s a lot to write about when it comes to the team’s legacy.“

This Alabama team will have its own place in history, and rightly so. What this team has accomplished exceeds fictional points and stats and Heisman. Players across the sport have sacrificed more than ever before; They have endured more than ever. They have been physically and mentally challenged in ways that remain difficult to understand.

They have played football during the pandemic.

He might not plunge into how awesome this season really is until later, maybe years down the road, with time to reflect on the exceptional circumstances in which it all happened.

“It was an unprecedented year of many adversities,” Alabama attack Alex Leatherwood He said. „But we kept on the track. We tried to stay focused and took it all day in and day out and really got everyone to buy and lock in what we wanted to achieve – and we came out victorious.“

Ohio pushed for the opportunity as well, believing it also had a championship caliber team Justin Fields Lead the way. Even though Buckeyes‘ team started their season late in Alabama, they have dealt with countless coronavirus issues to get to that point – and even discuss whether to postpone this championship match because they have had more COVID-19 problems during the week. the past.

All this speaks to the uncertainty of this season. Nobody really knows if college football will reach the finish line, as coaches have told anyone who will listen, „You’re only as good as the last test.“ The season was unstable every day, with coaches, players and coaches holding their breath waiting for the results of the Coronavirus test.

This increased the pressure on the players as they tried their best to follow all safety protocols to continue playing. As teams across the SEC dealt with the outbreak, and Saban dealt with the coronavirus himself, only one team really felt for sure: Alabama, thanks to Smith, Harris, Jones and everyone else. Yes, there were some close calls along the way. But this team only failed to score 40 points or more twice and three players had finished the top five for Heisman – and you can present a very real case today that they should have finished 1-2-3.

This doesn’t just happen by chance, of course. Saban recruits the best players and then develops the best players. But that kind of offensive performance was not appreciated either. Saban saw the scene in college football turning into wide open wrongdoing and scoring at will and turning with it – reinventing Crimson Tide into an unstoppable offensive force. Consider the first two national championships it won in Alabama: The Tide scored a total of 58 points – just six more than the score it ended Monday night.

Alabama attack coordinator Steve Sarkissian once again described it as an ingenious game. With full knowledge that Smith would be tied to each game, he put Smith in new and different formations to get the ball. But most of the time, Smith was standing behind and outdating Ohio’s defenders. By the time the first half ended, Smith had 12 catches for 215 yards and three touchdowns, broke three SEC career records, set a BCS / CFP championship record, tied another and set a school pot record.

„He did a really good job when he launched a game,“ Saban said of Sarkissian. „He knows what the other team is doing, he knows how to attack him, and he knows where to put players in a position to make those plays against what the other team is doing. He just did a great job this year.“

Meanwhile, Jones shot 464 yards – breaking Joe BoroBCS / CFP Championship record tying Burrow’s passing record to five.

One year after college football experts declared LSU and Burrow the greatest crime of all time, Alabama filed its own claim for this crown. None of that should come as a shock: Alabama missed the qualifiers a year ago and watched the division’s rival Tigers roll through everyone else in a similar fashion. Did anyone think Saban would be okay with that?

Jones, who stumbled onto his injured leg for much of the second half and still passed nicely after another, took a step further than Alabama declared their biggest attack.

„I think we’re the best team we’ve ever played,“ Jones said. “No team will play the SEC table matches like this again. But at the same time, we are very happy to win this match and put the icing on the cake. There was not much pressure; we just wanted to go there and play the game that we have all played since we were Five years old. „

Despite all the unknowns about how this season has evolved, Crimson Tide has stuck together.

„We had a mission,“ Smith said. „Everyone wanted to get things done the right way. We all came to work every day and just put in the work. We got the result we wanted.“

And in the end, the result we can all expect.