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GRAHAM: ’Bama win was blessedly normal
Graham, Patrick 2018(RGB).jpg
Patrick Graham is the owner of The Covington News. (Photo by Deborah Stewart)

There is so much I could write about it when it comes to the cesspool that is national politics in this day and time.

You know what? I don’t want to write about that. I’ve been writing about that for a number of weeks now, and I just want to put it down for five minutes and talk about something else.

Instead, I’d rather talk about what I did while I put it all down for five minutes — well more like five hours — personally.

I’d rather talk about the college football national title the University of Alabama won on Monday night.

Capping a special season with a special title game performance, the Tide rolled a clearly overmatched Ohio State team 52-24 to bring home its sixth title in the Bowl Championship Series and College Football Playoff era. The win secured Alabama’s 18th title overall, and the seventh for head coach Nick Saban, who now has more titles than any coach in the college football poll era.

Don’t feel bad, Buckeyes fans. Everyone Alabama played this season was overmatched. That was the beauty of this particular team, along with the incredible perseverance it took for them to accomplish what they accomplished.

With the backdrop of  COVID-19 and all the disruptions that came with it, Alabama is the first team in SEC history to go 10-0 in an all-conference schedule. The Tide pounded all comers from the West, and then beat all the best teams in the East, capping it with a win over Florida, the top team in the East, in the SEC title game.

Alabama carried that 11-0 record into the college football playoff, where it dispatched Notre Dame in the semis and then Ohio State for the title.

In between all the wins, Alabama players took home just about every national award you can, including the Heisman. And what a deserving winner ol’ second-and-26 DeVonta Smith was for the Tide.

Smith bookends Alabama’s last two national titles with his walkoff catch to beat Georgia as a freshman to his record-setting season and title game against Ohio State as a senior. That guy will be an Alabama legend forever.

Yes, I put down work, politics and everything else that weighs on me to watch the title game and bask in the glory afterwards. I fully took advantage of the 24-hour rule the next day to watch the wall-to-wall coverage and celebrate the Tide and all of its accomplishments.

Really, whether you are an Alabama fan or not, isn’t that what college football itself does for all of us this fall no matter who you pull for? Despite wondering for months if we were even going to have a season and then the starts and stops along the way, didn’t it give us five minutes, or an afternoon, each week to put everything down and just enjoy a little bit of normal this fall?

Wasn’t that absolutely the best? And could anything else even provide that brief moment of peace?

I don’t know, for me the answer is pretty simple.

Roll Tide.

Patrick Graham is owner of The Covington News and a graduate of the University of Alabama.