BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: TEXAS VS. ALABAMA

College football season comes to a close with Thursday night’s battle between #1 Alabama and #2 Texas for the BCS Championship.  The game will be played in the Rose Bowl in Southern California, so neither team will be worried about the unseasonably cold weather gripping much of the Southeast.  Instead they can focus on determining the BCS Champion.  Texas will be looking for its second national title in five years having beat USC with Vince Young at quarterback in 2005.  Alabama hasn’t won a national championship since 1992, and coach Nick Saban will be looking to change that in his third year at the helm.  The Crimson Tide is a -4 point college football betting favorite with the total set at 46.

Alabama reached this game by ending the championship reign of the University of Florida with a 32-13 victory in the SEC Championship Game.  The Crimson Tide boasts a powerful rushing attack led by Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram who rushed for a school-record 1,542 yards and 15 touchdowns.  The Tide offense is quarterbacked by heady and efficient Greg McElroy who finished the year with 2,450 yards with 17 touchdowns and only four interceptions.

Texas, like much of the Big 12 Conference this season, is a much more pass oriented offense behind senior signal caller Colt McCoy.  McCoy finished the regular season with 3,512 yards and 27 touchdowns while completing 70.5 percent of his passes.  Overall the Texas passing attack ranked 14th in the national with 279 yards per game.

Though both teams have impressive defensive statistics, Alabama’s stop unit is clearly the most formidable in this game as well as being among the best in college football.  The Crimson Tide scoring defense ranked #1 in the nation allowing 11 points per game.  Texas’ defense is also solid, but we don’t see them having the same game changing dominance as Alabama’s.  While the Longhorns ranked #1 in the country against the run, that is as much a function of the pass orientation in the Big 12 Conference as much as anything else.

The difficult time that Texas had with Nebraska in the Big 12 Championship game is instructive for what to expect here.  The Cornhuskers tough, smashmouth stop unit shut down the Longhorns offense by holding them to 13 points and nearly pulling the outright upset.  Only Nebraska’s sputtering offense allowed Texas to be in this game at all.  They won’t have the same luxury against a Crimson Tide team that will relentlessly pound Texas on the ground.  Texas’ greatest defensive strength is their playmaking secondary, which led the nation with 24 interceptions.  The problem here is that Alabama QB McElroy doesn’t throw interceptions (4 all season) and the Tide won’t likely need to take to the air much due to the strength of their rushing attack.

Ultimately, this contest is as much reflective of the relative strength and weaknesses of the SEC and Big 12 as anything else.  Nothing Texas faced this season will prepare them for the physicality of this Alabama team, while the Crimson Tide played—and dominated—a Florida team that features much the same stylistic challenges as Texas.  The Crimson Tide will control the ball and the clock and win by double digits in a game that should just stay UNDER the total.

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