SPORTS
Saturday, December 29, 2018
East Oregonian
B3
Alabama set for Oklahoma, with a title-game berth at stake
By TIM REYNOLDS
Associated Press
MIAMI
GARDENS,
Fla. — Nick Saban knows
Alabama cannot win every
game.
The Crimson Tide merely
come close.
This is
the fifth year
of the Col-
lege Foot-
ball Playoff,
and the fifth
Alabama
Saban
appearance
in the four-team tournament
to decide the national cham-
pion. The latest quest toward
another title, which would
be the school’s third in the
last four years, resumes Sat-
urday when the top-ranked
Crimson Tide (13-0) take
on fourth-ranked Oklahoma
(12-1) in the semifinals at the
Orange Bowl.
“It’s a good problem to
have,” said Oklahoma quar-
terback Kyler Murray, the
Heisman Trophy winner.
“They win a lot. We win a
lot. ... I’ve heard a lot of peo-
ple say ‘beat Alabama’ just
because they don’t like Ala-
bama or whatever. But I’m
not really too much into
that.”
The game is a matchup
between the two high-
est-scoring offenses in the
country, with Oklahoma
AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley, right, talks with Oklahoma offensive lineman Ben Powers
during an NCAA college football practice on Thursday in Davie, Fla.
slightly outpacing Alabama
there. It’s also a matchup of
arguably the two best play-
ers in the country; Mur-
ray and Alabama quarter-
back Tua Tagovailoa were
first and second, respec-
tively, in the Heisman
voting.
At stake is a berth in the
CFP title game on Jan. 7
against either Clemson or
Notre Dame. And Alabama
has four players who will
be appearing in their sev-
enth CFP game — which is
absurd, especially when con-
sidering that there have been
only 12 games total in the
event since it was put into
place starting with the 2014
season.
“We know we can’t be
perfect,” Saban said. “But
we’re certainly trying to
work every day to close the
gap on how good can we be,
and are we reaching our full
potential in how we improve
and work every day.”
The edge for the Crimson
Tide, on paper anyway, is
on defense. Alabama comes
into this game ranked fourth
nationally in points allowed
per game, while Oklahoma
is ranked 96th.
“We’ve prepared well,”
said Oklahoma coach Lin-
coln Riley, the 35-year-old
offensive mastermind who
will be coaching in his 15th
bowl game already. “Con-
fident in the way our team
has approached this entire
month. We’ve had a great
week here so far. Can’t wait
for Saturday night.”
Here’s some other things
to know going into the
Orange Bowl:
Record seekers
Alabama and Clemson
(which plays Notre Dame
in the Cotton Bowl on Sat-
urday) both enter the CFP
with a chance to go 15-0
— should either claim the
national championship. And
that would be truly rare
air. The NCAA defines the
“modern era” as starting in
1937, and no team has won
more than 14 games in a sea-
son during that span. The last
team to go 15-0 at the top
level of college football was
Penn, back in 1897.
Rare meeting
For a couple of storied
programs, Alabama and
Oklahoma haven’t faced off
very often. The Sooners lead
the all-time series 3-1-1, and
three of those matchups have
been in bowl games — start-
ing with the Orange Bowl on
Jan. 1, 1963, a 17-0 Alabama
victory. Their most recent
matchup was on Jan. 2, 2014
in the Sugar Bowl, when the
Sooners prevailed 45-31.
Alabama is 66-5 since.
Saban milestone
The NCAA record books
might not necessarily agree,
but Saturday will mark the
300th game for Alabama’s
Nick Saban as a collegiate
head coach. His teams went
236-62-1 in the first 299
games, though five of those
wins from the 2007 season
— his first with the Crimson
Tide — were later vacated
by the NCAA.
Happy homecomings
The best receiver on
each team is a South Flor-
ida kid who just happens to
be a first-team All-Ameri-
can. Oklahoma’s Marquise
Brown — he goes by “Hol-
lywood,” the nod to his Hol-
lywood, Florida hometown
— averages 101.4 receiv-
ing yards per game. Ala-
bama’s Jerry Jeudy averages
84.8 yards per game; the
Biletnikoff Award winner
as the nation’s top receiver
hails from nearby Deerfield
Beach, Florida.
Orange Bowl history
It’s the 20th appear-
ance in the Orange Bowl
for Oklahoma, extending
the Sooners’ record in that
department. Alabama will be
playing in the Orange Bowl
for the ninth time. And it’s
the second time the game
has been part of the CFP —
Clemson beat Oklahoma at
the Orange Bowl in 2015,
a CFP semifinal. The CFP
returns to the Orange Bowl
in 2021, when Hard Rock
Stadium will be the site of
the national championship
game.
Cotton Bowl: Can Notre Dame measure up to No. 2 Clemson?
By RALPH D. RUSSO
AP College Football Writer
DALLAS — The ques-
tion was about sustaining
high-level success in college
football and Dabo Swin-
ney’s answer lasted 3 min-
utes, 40 seconds. Brevity
is not the Clemson coach’s
strong suit.
Swinney talked about
how people make the pro-
gram, continuity leads to
consistency, and how it can’t
just be about the results on
the scoreboard.
“It’s a holistic approach.
It’s social. It’s spiritual. It’s
life skills. It’s career devel-
opment. It’s every area,”
Swinney said Friday during
the final Cotton Bowl news
conference. “And I think
our commitment to that has
been a big reason that we’ve
been able to sustain our suc-
cess because I think certain
types of young people have
bought into that.”
As Swinney talked, Notre
Dame coach Brian Kelly lis-
tened — a joint news confer-
ence with Swinney involves
a lot of listening — occa-
sionally nodding his head
in agreement. Swinney has
built the Tigers into what
Notre Dame used to be and
what Kelly is trying to recre-
ate in South Bend, Indiana.
The
second-ranked
Tigers (13-0) face the third-
ranked Fighting Irish (12-
0) on Saturday in Notre
Dame’s first College Foot-
ball Playoff appearance. It
is Clemson’s fourth straight.
The winner will play for the
national championship on
Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, Cali-
fornia. Clemson has played
for the title twice in the past
three seasons.
Kelly marveled at Clem-
son’s consistency under
Swinney.
“It’s easy to get dis-
tracted,” Kelly said. “And
to keep that within your
culture in your program
requires just to have an eye
on it every single day. So his
Want to Lose Weight?
ability to continue to keep
his program year in and year
out at the top of college foot-
ball requires more than just
recruiting good players.”
Kelly has been at Notre
Dame for nine years and had
the most successful run for
a Fighting Irish coach since
Lou Holtz, who won the
school’s last national title
in 1988. The only coaches
who have won more games
at Notre Dame than Kelly
(81-34) are Hall of Famers
Knute Rockne (105), Holtz
(100), Ara Parseghian (95)
and Frank Leahy (87).
Kelly has only once
been this close to a national
championship and after Ala-
bama beat the Irish 42-14 in
the 2012 BCS championship
game, Notre Dame really
didn’t seem all that close in
retrospect. Just two seasons
ago, the Irish went 4-8 and
Kelly overhauled his staff
and his approach to lead-
ing a team. The result was
a huge turnaround to 10-3
last year. The foundation
appears to be in place for the
Irish to regularly contend for
the playoff.
Still, Kelly and his team
have downplayed any talk
of the Cotton Bowl being a
barometer for the program.
Sure, the Irish are here again
on the big stage, but do they
really belong?
“When you go through
and win week after week,
you’re past measuring
sticks,” Kelly said earlier
this week.
If Alabama is the current
standard in college football,
Clemson has been the only
program that comes close.
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