Corn Nation Loses Your Money: Natty Light Edition

Mike: ‘Bama and Clempson gotta travel through four time zones to play for a Natty in wine country. Go figure.

Patrick: This game has been foretold since.....the beginning of the season.

Jill: This game is a huge surprise...to no one.

Uglydog56: Just can't get excited for the sequel to the sequel to the sequel.

Paul: I’m so sick of these two teams. I DGAF who wins. The only thing that makes this even remotely interesting to me is that I would love to take a tour of the (sort of) nearby wine country.

College Football Playoff Championship at Santa Clara, CA

Alabama (-5) vs Clemson

Patrick: End of season Haiku!

Redwood Gridiron

Southern drawl invades east coast

‘Bama wins by ten

University of Alabama 23 Clemson University 13

Jill: Two eastern teams traveling to the west coast to play in a nearly empty stadium. Why wouldn’t their fans travel all the way across the county you say? Why would they skip the chance to watch their favorite team play for a natty when they haven’t gotten to see their team win a natty since...2016 and 2017. Oh.

I’m picking Clemson since the rest of my bowl picks have been trash. Might as well finish the postseason in style.

Uglydog56: Don't particularly care, to be honest. I see Alabama struggling to establish a run game until a few deep passes loosen things up. Saban screams at his team for not being up four touchdowns by halftime. Dabo quotes some scripture and pretends to be better than the others, but convinces no one. The Clemson defense makes a game if it, but Bama inexorably wears them down. Elephants fly.

Jon: WHY WHY WHY. Why do we have to be treated to this four times in a row? Did I not appease my God? Am I really dead, did I not recover and this is part of my personal hell in that you are non-playable players in a video game?

Tom Osborne, our god on earth, took 20 years to win this game. Will we give this new messiah this much time? Will Nebraska fans not understand what we’re up against this time... that this is a new, a truly different monster?

NO ONE WILL STOP ALABAMA. IT’S NOT JUST THIS YEAR. IT’S EVERY YEAR UNTIL THE END OF OUR EARTHLY EXISTENCE.

At least until a new hero comes along. Could that hero be Scott Frost?

STAY TUNED!

Albama 848 Clemson 2

Paul: Clempson systematically dismantled Notre Dame. Bama looked like it was going to do that to Oklahoma, then the second quarter happened and it was a reasonable football game. What does that have to do with this game? Not a damn thing. Bama wins 41-35.

Andy: While everyone has spent the season trembling at Alabammy’s “greatest team ever” - including Oklahoma who backpedaled to a 28-0 deficit before realizing they could run up & down the field on them - the fact is that they played one of the more average slates in the country before their SOS got a boost by facing Georgia & Oklahoma in the post-season.

More importantly they only went 8-6 against the spread and have failed to cover in 3 of their past 4 games including the two toughest teams they faced all season...and The Citadel. Clemson’s another pretty good team and while Alabama was failing to cover an Oklahoma team that Tide worshipers swore they’d run out of the stadium, Climpson was actually doing that to undefeated Notre Dame.

This line has dropped from 5.5 to 4.5 for a reason. Clemson 34 Tide 30

UNLWiebe: To be honest I don’t really care. I hate Alabama and I’m rooting for Clemson, but if this is the National Championship or a semifinal game for another four years I might be done with the playoff. Make bowl games great again! Alabama 30 Clemson 28

Mike: These two schools have been separating themselves from the rest of the pack for a few years now, so it’s only natural that we’re seeing this matchup again. Great players want to play for great teams, so both schools have a metric crap-ton of talent. And this year, it’s young talent, which means that until Nick Saban retires, we might be seeing this duopoly in the middle of a long run. Unless, say an Oklahoma figures out how to play a little defense. Or Jim Harbaugh stops doing what used to be referred to as Clempsoning. Or maybe it’s Scott Frost who eventually breaks this thing up?

But first, tonight’s game. My first take has been Alabama, but I’ve got this nagging feeling that’s just too impulsive. Clemson has looked every bit the equal to the Crimson Tide this season, and frankly, the two teams have alternated victories so far. Which mean it’s Clempson time. I originally was going to go 42-37 in favor of Clemson, but then I started hearing about the fears about the field conditions after the monsoon rains of the last few days. Yes, they replaced the awful sod at Levi’s Stadium and covered the field with a tarp, but that means the field has had even less time to take root. So I’m dropping my score estimate: Clemson 34, ‘Bama 30.