ONE FOR THE AGES

The biggest game in all of the college football season was played last week, the National Championship game. This is the third year since the NCAA switched to the playoff formatting to decide who gets into the National Championship. The semi-final games were played on New Year’s Eve and left two of the four teams standing to play in the National Championship. These two teams were the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. Now for the second year in a row these two teams met up to throw down and decide who the best team in college football will be. Last year’s game ended with a very high scoring game and had Alabama coming out on top. This year Alabama was looking to become the very first team in CFB history to go 15-0, but Clemson was coming in with one loss already and only had one thing on their mind, revenge.

After a great first half by Alabama and a very sluggish one by Clemson, a lot of fans believed that Alabama was destined to repeat and make CFB history. I asked one of my good friends and CFB fanatic, Gracen Shook, about his thoughts during the game and he said “I was actually one of the many people that quit on Clemson after Alabama went up 14-0.” While the game progressed, it seemed that Clemson refused to just lie down and instead decided that the second half was going to be there’s to dominate. Deshaun Watson, junior QB for the Tigers, led them all the way back to take a 28-24 lead on the dominant Tide. Everyone finally started to see the possibility of Alabama finally being knocked off, well except for Alabama’s offense. Jalen Hurts, the Tide’s freshman QB, marched the offense down the field and scored a touchdown to put the Tide up 31-28.

Once Hurts scored that touchdown with a minute to go it seemed very unlikely that the Tigers could pull of the unbelievable and take down the almighty Tide, but they did just that. In what can only be described as one of the greatest drives in the history of college football, Watson and the Tigers stormed down the field and scored the game winning touchdown with one second left. The Tigers then kicked an onside kick, recovered it, and kneeled the ball to become the 2016-17 CFB National Champions. Gracen was pulling for the Tigers so I asked him what he felt when he saw the Tigers had won, “I was happy for Coach Dabo (Clemson Head Coach), Deshaun Watson and the whole crew over there. I wasn’t one of the guys jumping up and down in my living room but I was very proud of the way they played.”

If you are an avid college football fan like myself, then you definitely will not be complaining about this National Championship game, unless you’re an Alabama fan. I can positively say that when we’re older, we’ll look back at this game as one of the greatest of all time.