2010 BCS National Championship Game DVD
Alabama vs Texas DVD
PASADENA, Calif. -- Nick Saban's rise to the top of the college football world has been built one thunderous tackle at a time. The wins have kept coming because the hits have kept coming, whether Saban was coaching in Baton Rouge or Tuscaloosa.
His defenses don't just shut offenses down. They beat offenses up.
In a bizarrely entertaining Citi BCS National Championship Game on Thursday night, the dead-serious Saban became the first coach to win titles at two different schools, thanks to two game-turning, molar-rattling tackles that will echo in Alabama lore for years to come.
One came just four minutes into the game. The other came with just three minutes left. In between was a whole lot of craziness -- coaching gaffes and comebacks and plot twists galore. But the Crimson Tide's two punishing shots on Texas quarterbacks were the trademark Saban plays that bookended their 37-21 victory over the Longhorns at the Rose Bowl.
The first was end Marcell Dareus' knockout blow to senior QB Colt McCoy just five plays into Texas' first offensive possession. The legally lethal hit on McCoy's throwing shoulder ended his night, his season and his superb college career. The diagnosis was a pinched nerve. The result was a clinched title.
"It certainly changed the game," Saban said.
The other tackle was linebacker Eryk Anders' unimpeded blind-side blitz that leveled gritty freshman QB Garrett Gilbert, resulting in a fumble the Crimson Tide recovered at the Texas 3-yard line. Prior to that play, Gilbert was authoring an amazing Hollywood story, picking his jaw up off the Rose Bowl grass after a gruesome first half and dragging the Longhorns back from down 24-6 to 24-21. But the Tide defense would not tolerate what would have been an epic collapse; it forced the turnover and Bama scored the touchdown that put the game away.
"The difference in the game," Saban said.
This is SabanBall. Hit like your scholarship check depends on it. Take the ball away (five times in this game). Win.
This also fits the pattern of recent Southeastern Conference dominance in the BCS championship game, where the league now has won an unprecedented four straight national titles. SEC defenses have been vicious in victory, mauling Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith three years ago, then Buckeyes QB Todd Boeckman, then Oklahoma's Sam Bradford into poor performances. Now the league can tack McCoy's skin to the wall, as well.
It was fitting that Rolando McClain walked off the Rose Bowl field with the BCS championship totem tucked under his arm -- the crystal football. McClain is a linebacker. Even on a team that features the first Heisman Trophy winner in school history, a defensive guy was the right choice to bring the hardware home.
In the final analysis, this title game embodied the entire season. It was supposed to be all about offense, with the return of three Heisman-finalist quarterbacks from 2008, but it was dominated by defense. It began with a season-altering shoulder injury and it ended with one.
If anyone knows how Colt McCoy feels, it's his good friend Bradford of rival Oklahoma -- his season was trashed in the first half of the first game when he injured his right arm against BYU. Texas' path to the BCS title game was smoothed in part by Bradford's injury -- but then it hit a dead end when McCoy went down here.
"I saw the hit," said Alabama running back (and Heisman winner) Mark Ingram. "I was like, 'Oooh, that kind of hurt.' Then somebody told me he was running off holding his shoulder."
McCoy never ran back on. It was a miserably sad way to end a great college run -- and for a long time thereafter it appeared the injury would cheat football fans everywhere out of a potentially great game.
"As much as I enjoy winning, you always hate to see a great competitor who's had a great career not be able to participate in a game that he's probably worked his entire career to be a part of," Saban said.
McCoy's replacement, Gilbert, hadn't played a high-pressure snap all season. He's little more than a year removed from winning a Texas high school state title. Then they're patting him on the rear and sending him in to beat Alabama for a national title.
A nervous breakdown would have been a perfectly understandable response.
"Here's a guy standing there on the sidelines as cold as he can be, and all of a sudden in the national championship game it's like, 'OK, son, you've got it,'" Texas coach Mack Brown said. "I can't even imagine."
The initial results were unimaginably bad. Gilbert was 1-for-10 for minus-4 yards. He had two interceptions, one of them a pick-six, after a calamitous end-of-half coaching decision by Brown.
Instead of running out the clock down 17-6 and trying to regroup, Brown called a timeout with 15 seconds left and the ball at the Texas 37. Then, hoping to get in range for a bomb to the end zone or a long field goal, the Horns cooked up a shovel pass that shoveled dirt on their title hopes.
Garrett's pass bounced off the hands of D.J. Monroe and into the hands of Dareus, who suddenly turned into a 296-pound Reggie Bush. Dareus ran. He spun away from a tackle like an elephantine ballerina. Then he ran some more, until he was in the end zone for a touchdown that seemed to end the game.
"My first reaction was grab the ball, and then after that I blanked out," Dareus said with a dimpled smile. "All I was thinking about is Mark Ingram and Javier Arenas and just doing moves I didn't think I could do. I can't believe I pulled off that spin."
Nobody else could believe Texas took that gamble.
"We called a little shovel pass that I had never seen intercepted before, and I certainly hadn't seen it intercepted for a touchdown," Brown said.
It was the most costly coaching decision of the night, but not the worst. That honor belongs to Saban, who raised eyebrows by taking the ball to start the game instead of deferring -- then ordered up a you-cannot-be-serious fake punt on fourth-and-23 from the Alabama 20.
But five plays later, the storyline was altered by the injury to McCoy, and the Horns were held to a field goal that set the tone for subsequent offensive failures. Without the winningest quarterback in college football history, surely Texas was toast. But it refused to submit.
Gilbert regrouped and led a rally for 15 unanswered Longhorns points. And when the defense held overly conservative Alabama again and got the ball back with 3 minutes, 14 seconds left, you could feel a miracle percolating.
"I actually thought when we got the ball back that he was going to take us down and win," said Brown, whose national title win four years ago in this same stadium was fueled by a gutsy winning drive in the final minutes.
But there would be no repeat of that scenario, not after Anders separated Gilbert from the ball. When it comes to BCS title games, Nick Saban's merciless defenses don't allow miracles on their watch.
PASADENA, Calif. -- First, the Alabama defense knocked Colt McCoy out of the game. Later, it saved a national championship.
Hanging onto a precarious three-point lead and with momentum on the other side, linebacker Eryk Anders was determined not to let the Citi BCS National Championship Game slip away.
Anders forced a fumble on his blindside sack of Texas backup quarterback Garrett Gilbert with 3:02 left Thursday night to help the top-ranked Crimson Tide hold on for a 37-21 victory -- a win that figured to be much easier when McCoy went out with a shoulder injury early in the first quarter.
"We said, 'It's on us, the defensive line,'" Alabama's 350-pound All-American Terrence Cody said. "We had to make plays to finish it off. There was no doubt in our huddle. We knew what we can do."
They did, and brought back glory to one of the country's most storied programs, the football factory that Bear Bryant built. This one came courtesy of Nick Saban, who resurrected this team in the short span of three seasons.
The win gave Alabama its eighth major poll national championship, tying Notre Dame for the most ever.
Alabama coach Nick Saban became the second coach (Urban Meyer) to win two BCS national championships. His other title came at LSU.
Mark Ingram joined USC's Matt Leinart (2004) as the only players to win a BCS title and the Heisman Trophy in the same season. Ingram also became the second running back in the last 64 years to win the Heisman and a national championship of any kind in the same season, joining Tony Dorsett's (Pittsburgh) feat in 1976.
Texas lost its first BCS bowl game in four tries, dropping to 3-1 all-time. Only LSU (4-0) had a better record in BCS games.
The Longhorns' Jordan Shipley finished with 10 catches for 122 yards, tying him for the second-most receptions in a BCS championship game.
"We back," said Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram, the offensive MVP.
Back for the first time since 1992, when Bryant's protege, Gene Stallings, led the Crimson Tide to its last national title. This one gives Alabama eight since the polls began in the 1930s. Its seventh Associated Press championship should be a shoo-in when the votes are tabulated.
Ingram finished with 116 yards rushing and two touchdowns, and Trent Richardson had 109 yards and two scores as Alabama beat Texas for the first time in nine meetings between two of college football's most successful teams.
Anders will go down with them in Crimson Tide lore, as will Marcell Dareus, who knocked McCoy -- the winningest quarterback in college football history -- down and out with an injury to his throwing shoulder on Texas' fifth offensive play.
"I just heard a thump when I hit him," Dareus said. "I did lay it down pretty hard. I didn't try to, but it felt great."
A bit later, Dareus picked off Gilbert's shovel pass and returned it 28 yards for a TD and a 24-6 lead late in the second quarter.
But it wasn't quite over.
"It was like we'd won the game at halftime," Saban said. "But you can't accept being average. You're playing a team in the national championship game that knows how to win."
The second half turned out to be anything but a laugher with Gilbert in the game -- a highly recruited freshman who was Texas' "quarterback of the future" but had thrown only 26 college passes coming into this game.
He threw two touchdown passes to All-American Jordan Shipley to trim the deficit to 24-21 with 6:15 left, and after an Alabama punt, he had the ball at the 7-yard line, 93 yards away from one of the most improbable comeback stories in the history of the game.
But after an Alabama holding penalty moved the ball to the 17, Gilbert dropped back to pass and got rocked by Anders, a senior who plays in the shadow of Cody and fellow All-American Rolando McClain. The ball went flying and Courtney Upshaw recovered.
Three plays later, Ingram surged into the end zone from the 1 for a 10-point lead. A few minutes later, after Gilbert's third interception of the night, Richardson scored his second touchdown to make it 37-21.
Dareus finished with one tackle, one interception and one touchdown, but all were game-changers.
Seeking its second national title in five years, Texas (13-1) got to the game on the back of McCoy, its All-American quarterback, who often looked like a one-man show in leading the Longhorns to 13 straight wins.
After the injury, McCoy was asking to go back in to finish his last college game. His dad, interviewed on ABC, said the injury wasn't that bad.
But Texas coach Mack Brown decided to err on the side of caution, and McCoy spent the second half wearing a headset on the sideline, trying to encourage his teammates.
"I would have given anything to be out there because it would have been different," he said.
The Longhorns defense, ranked third in the country in yards allowed, kept things close while Gilbert got his feet underneath him.
And boy did he.
He led the Longhorns on a five-play, 59-yard drive to make it 24-13, then 60 yards for the second score, and suddenly, the Tide was falling apart, not rolling. The 2-point conversion made it 24-21.
"It's a hard learning curve but he learned fast," Brown said. "At one point, I thought he was going to win the ballgame."
The Tide, however, hung on and Saban became the first coach since the polls began in 1936 to win national titles with two schools. He won the 2003 BCS championship with LSU.
The program was grounded, of course, in the hardscrabble work-ethic brought to Tuscaloosa in the 1960s by The Bear, who roamed the sideline in his houndstooth hat and painted the quintessential portrait of a football coach in those days.
His legacy still permeates almost everything at Alabama and it was Saban, who took over a program decimated by scandals, bad decisions and NCAA troubles over the past decade, who convinced the Tide faithful they had to let go of the past if they were ever going to enjoy the present.
It took him just three short years, and now 'Bama is back.
"I think there's a lot of people who are responsible for that," Saban said. "Our administration made a commitment to rebuild Alabama, to do something everyone could be proud of."
other Alabama Crmson Tide football DVDs
other Texas Longhorns football DVDs
NFL football DVDs /
NCAA college football DVDs /
NBA basketball DVDs /
Major League Baseball DVDs /
NFL Europe DVDs /
XFL football DVDs /
Super Bowl DVDs /
NFL draft DVDs /
Canadian football CFL DVDs /
USFL football DVDs /
Arena football AFL DVDs /
World Leage WLAF football DVDs /
Japanese baseball DVDs /
NCAA college basketball DVDs /
NHL hockey DVDs /
Olympics hockey DVDs /
Sumo wrestling DVDs /
contact
at 
this site does not support or condone the sale of sports telecasts in any form