On Monday night, the universities of Georgia and Alabama played for the national championship in college football. If you watched the game, you know it was a defensive struggle until the last 17 or 18 minutes, going from a score of 9 – 6, favor of Alabama, to 35 – 18, favor of Georgia, who scored three offensive and one defensive touchdown in that time. Georgia had not won a national championship since the 1980 season and hadn’t beaten Alabama in their last seven games, including a loss in early December.
My school, Clemson, beat Alabama for the national championship in the 2016 and 2018 seasons. But Dabo Swinney, Clemson’s coach, had never been an assistant under Nick Sabin, Alabama’s coach. Only one of Sabin’s assistant coaches had ever defeated Sabin, and that was earlier this season. I wrote about Texas A&M’s kicker’s mother praying for that winning field goal. Georgia’s coach, Kirby Smart worked with Sabin for 11 seasons at four different schools.
No one is more intense than Nick Sabin, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the warm exchange between Sabin and Smart after the game. It included a rare look at Sabin smiling, and if I can read lips well, he said to Smart, “God bless you.”
“I love Kirby,” Saban said. “I think Kirby has a lot of respect for us. He did a great job for us for a long time. If we had to lose a national championship, I’d rather lose one to one of the former assistants who certainly did a great job for us and has done a great job for his program and his team. “I’m really proud of him. And I’m proud of the way he’s been able to coach his team and the consistency that they’ve played with all year.” – From ESPN.com.
A hard-fought game, which ended with players and coaches greeting each other warmly. In sport, this is as it should be. This was not the case at the NFL’s Raiders – Chargers game Sunday night. I’ll write about that tomorrow.
1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil upon the head, Running down on the beard, The beard of Aaron, Running down on the edge of his garments.
3 It is like the dew of Hermon, Descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the LORD commanded the blessing– Life forevermore. (Psalm 133, NKJV)
In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. (Galatians 2.9, NLT)