PERHAPS SOMETHING GOOD WILL FINALLY HAPPEN IN TUSCALOOSA
After a disastrous eleven-win season, the tragicomic Alabama football program has done some recruiting of its own to try and right the ship. First came the hire of Lane Kiffin, dynamic young offensive coordinator with no history of anything interesting happening to him at all. Now comes the selection of Tosh Lupoi, the West Coast's best recruiter, to plug the holes in Alabama's leaky recruiting wall, and signal that Nick Saban is not content with finishing second to anyone.
That entire paragraph is utterly insane in so many ways, most notably because it's written from the most ridiculous angle possible, and also because it still feels kind of true. Following an eleven-win season and a run of three national titles in four years, a two-loss season resulted in the departure of their offensive coordinator and a simultaneous revamp of their recruiting staff.
Odder still, it's not like Saban is doing this locally. He's taking two coaches largely known for their work on the West Coast, and bringing them into the SEC because Alabama, evidently tired of dominating recruiting in its own backyard, would now like to begin effortlessly plucking recruits from wherever they like on the edge of the Pacific, too. (Remember: the one thing Lane Kiffin did well consistently at USC, barring all other failures and whoooboy were there a few, was recruit.)
So this is either the most aggressive, ballsy, and supremely confident program in the entire nation, or its most panic-stricken and insecure, or both because the only standard for Alabama at this point is Alabama, and the only payoff is winning national titles. That sounds like something where all the fun has been sucked from the air entirely, and no one is ever happy about anything, and two losses feel like eight. Speaking as a Florida fan to a fanbase that is deeply poisoned with its own success: TWO LOSSES DO NOT FEEL LIKE EIGHT LOSSES, Y'ALL. TRUST US. TAKE YOUR TOXIC SUCCESS AND RUN WITH IT TO THE DAMN HILLS.