Ugh. Not This Game Again.

It’s the eve of the national championship and a matchup of clearly the two best teams in the country all season, and no one seems to give a damn.

Sure, the usual cheerleaders are out in force to call us bad fans for not wanting to sign up for Clemson-Alabama IV, but as a general rule of thumb, the marketing strategy of calling the customer base a bunch of losers for not liking what the salespeople are selling is not the most effective pitch.

Championship Fever... catch it!

Can you feel that excitement, you bunch of pathetic losers? How dare you not like the fourth consecutive matchup of the same two teams, who let’s face it, are near mirror images of each other? What more could you want? You have Bama in one corner and Bama Lite in the other! If you don’t like the same thing over and over, it’s you who are the problem!

Of course Bama and Clemson fans should be excited. It’s their teams, and winning is awesome. No one is asking them to apologize for being great programs. Sure, it has sucked all of the fun out of college football, but that’s honestly not Saban’s problem. He gets paid to win championships, and that’s what he’s doing.

Then again, even Bama and Clemson fans are beginning to feel the burnout. The cheapest ticket to tonight’s game is $126, down $1600 from last year. Hell, last year’s get-in price of $1,752 would get you 50-yard-line seats this year ($1,250 apiece) with room to spare.

Yes, a lot of that has to do with the insane decision to place this game in the football hotbed of Santa Clara, home to expensive hotel rooms, even more expensive flights, and a festive atmosphere so hot that they are holding the Fan Fest in neighboring San Francisco.

Hey, the good news is that Clemson and Bama are both incredibly young teams, so a rematch next year is likely again. 70% of Bama’s yards and scoring come from underclassmen, and that mark is 75% for Clemson. So, this is going to get worse, y’all.

Look, even Ali-Frazier had the good sense to stop after three bouts.

Yes, these are the two best teams in college football, and yes, they will likely be the best two teams next year as well. But to expect anyone outside of those two fanbase to give a crap anymore is a tough sell. This was an exciting, epic matchup in 2016. The rematch in 2017 was just as great. Hell, even having a rubber match in 2018 was pretty cool. But Jesus, how much more blood are we expected to extract from this stone?

Insulting the fans won’t make this matchup anymore enticing. I can’t speak for every fan in the country, but I know I’m tired of it. Too much of anything tends to make it less and less compelling. I mean, I love Die Hard, but I tuned out by Die Hard 4, just like most of America.

The problem is, the only way to stop it is to get better and beat one of these teams. That either means someone from the ACC needs to finally get their act together to knock off Clemson, or LSU needs to stop futzing about and beat Bama. The Tigers return a killer defense and what looks like it should be a competent offense next season, with a sprinkling of impact blue chip talent coming in at needed positions (Emery at running back, Stingley at corner and punt returner, Rosenthal at tackle).

But we can worry about that in the long offseason. For tonight, I guess we’ll trudge through college football’s answer to Groundhog’s Day, and watch either Bama win yet another title, or watch its closest clone win its second title in three years.

Yeah, of course I’ll watch. It’s the last football game of the year. But it doesn’t mean I’ll like it. And we can all dream of a year without Bama versus Clemson. It just doesn’t seem like that will happen any time soon. And it’s okay to admit that it sort of sucks.