They deserved to win. But there ain't no rightfully about Alabama.
They deserved to win because they did not make mistakes. I counted at least 3 major examples of "freshman-like" blown coverages by Clemson's secondary. Overall Clemson outgained Alabama as well as having a whole lot more sacks and tackles for losses. But Saban plays a conservative, don't beat yourself style of football and generally takes very few calculated risks in a game. The on side kick was about the riskiest thing he did and that play was wide open for the taking.
Loaded in the sense of talent. Not so much in the sense of experience, and in an offensive line that had to be built from scratch almost weekly for most of the season. As I recalled earlier, followers, though not the coaches, of Clemson have pointed to 2016 as the breakout year. Instead they got Swinney's prediction of 15-0.
Your standards must be out of sight. I consider Alabama the Georgia of SEC West, except literate.
You are correct. The term, or word, was actually coined by Clemson fans in frustration at what they called "inexplicable" losses to teams they should have beaten. Not individual plays or failures of which every game has many. The term would cover, for instance, our loss to Kansas back in '10 or whenever, to Middle Tennessee a few years later, and then Duke and UNC in our 11-3 season. Just unexplainable losses.
I had family members go to/play sports at South Carolina so I guess that contributes to it. I still see Clemson as our ACC rival though and I won't cheer for any of our rivals to win a title. Plus I don't see how we would reap any benefits to Clemson winning like some people seem to think. It's not going to make the ACC stronger. The narrative already is that Clemson and FSU are just above the rest of the ACC. It won't change the perception of the conference in football. It won't make our recruiting any better. It'll make Clemson's better. So I don't see a point in cheering for them. We play them every year so I hope they remain beatable for us. We are at least still undefeated against Dabo in Atlanta.
We beat them in part because Watson got re-injured. But we also beat them because they couldn't stop our offense any better than Bama could stop theirs last night. We just gotta hope that our offense returns next year, or we won't be able to stay on the field with them......unless Watson gets injured again, but Tech fan or not, I would not want to see that happen.
Sounds like one of those memorable Churchill quotes about rooting for the devil if Hitler invaded hell. My stretch not your's, but I get it.
It is without doubt a great rivalry, though for some reason not recognized as such outside the schools' fan bases. Thus it is that when the difficulties of a 14-team, two division conference scheduling is pondered, one of the first things they talk about is eliminating such games on an annual basis, figuring Tech already has its rival, Georgia, on the schedule. Drives me nuts.
I think those are mistakes as part of the game, so to speak. In my mind what cost them the NC was the KO return, the blocked FG before the half, and the pooch kick recovery. Those were special teams' mistakes and not individual failures. Unfortunate from an ACC perspective, but ST was Clemson's Achilles Heel all year. Alas, we are familiar with ST problems.