For Alabama, it came down to a physics problem.In the last seconds of what suddenly became a white-knuckle 'Third Saturday' tilt, Terrence Cody, the Crimson Tide's city block of a nose tackle, punched through the Tennessee line and came face to foot with Vols' kicker Daniel Lincoln. All that was left to was to see whether something the weight of an upright piano could rise high enough into the air to bring down a 44-yard-field goal try.
So, when the would-be game-winning kick caromed off Cody's armpit, sealing Alabama's 12-10 win, the nose tackle ripped off his helmet with two hands and let loose a massive yelp that must have echoed from Tuscaloosa and Tuscany.
He hadn't just beaten Tennessee. He'd done a number on Isaac Newton too.
"I just knew we had to make a play, I had to make a play," said the 360-pound high flyer. "We couldn't wait on anybody else to make a play ... so I dug down deep and told myself I was about to block it. The ball snapped, I got a good jump... and just stuck my arm up."
And he made Alabama's case as the national championship favorite, even if the Tide's win was as ugly as the offensive line's team photo and twice as tough.
"That's how fragile a season can be," Tide head coach Nick Saban said. "Make one mistake and you have to go overcome it. I hope that there's a lot of lessons for our team to learn from this."
The Tide's win will do nothing for the style points crowd, but that hardly matters. Style points, those arbitrary way-you-won measures doled out by those without a great argument as to why a football team may or may not be good, are for those in the rear view mirror.
And everyone is still looking forward at the Tide.
This was a game Alabama needed to win, not because they were No. 1 for the first time this season or because there's a pack of undefeated teams from lesser conferences nipping at their cleats -- the SEC championship game, after all will serve as a BCS title eliminator -- but because these gritty victories are the stuff that separate national title contenders from pretenders.
In their eighth consecutive game against one of the 10 best defenses, Alabama did what good teams do. They found a way to win.
Of course, if you'd asked Saban in the final five seconds, Alabama might've traded the gut-check victory for a quiet walk into the locker room.
Up until the final four minutes, it had all gone right for Saban's team. The Tide hadn't committed a turnover and clung to a 12-3 lead. But, three minutes and 30 seconds from their eighth win and a much-needed bye week, Alabama running back Mark Ingram lost the first fumble of his career. Two minutes later, Tennessee's Gerald Jones was celebrating the Vols' first touchdown. A successful onside kick gave the Vols the ball at midfield and a GPS guided rope of a pass from Jonathan Crompton to tight end Luke Stocker set up the game-winning field goal attempt.
But when everything went haywire, Alabama found a path to victory.
"I think great teams have great players that can make great plays in critical situations," said Saban, who would know a thing or two about great teams, having won the 2003 BCS title. "We had a couple of defensive linemen that made some huge plays."
It was a win from the history books of another national champion.
Three years ago, during Florida's run to the championship in the 2006 season, the Gators' Jarvis Moss blocked a pair of kicks in the fourth quarter against South Carolina, an extra point and a would-be game-winning field goal off the foot of Ryan Succop as time expired.
Stop us if any of this sounds familiar.
Florida held on for the 17-16 win over South Carolina. They were 9-1 with the victory that day and wouldn't lose again the rest of the year. Urban Meyer would later call it one of the greatest plays in Gator history.
Florida had found a way to win.
For Alabama, it was clear the season had begun to wear down the Tide. For eight straight weeks, the Crimson Tide had played one of the toughest schedules in the country. A week earlier, they held off a physical South Carolina team. Before that, it was Ole Miss. In Week 1, it had been Virginia Tech.
"I felt like our team was really tired this week psychologically, probably more mentally than really physically," Saban said. "We had a lot of guys beat up, a lot of guys missed practice and a lot of guys struggling to do what we need to do."
Now the schedule runs mostly downhill for the Tide, at least as downhill as the SEC gets. After a bye week, Alabama hosts LSU before finishing with dates at Mississippi State and stumbling Auburn, sandwiched around a late-season tune-up against Chattanooga.
Saturday's win did leave some questions unanswered for the Tide -- not the least of which was whether an armpit has ever played such a pivotal role in a national title game. Embattled quarterback Greg McElroy didn't commit a turnover against a stifling Tennessee defense, but still is the team's obvious weak link. The Volunteers out-gained the Alabama and the Tide benefited from a pair of Leigh Tiffin field goals that just scraped by over the cross bar, and one from Lincoln that didn't.
Are the Tide great? No. But this year, that's the wrong question. There are no great teams. The only question that matters is if anyone else is better. After Saturday, the answer is no.
Because in the end, Alabama did exactly what good teams do. They found a way to win, even if it was as unlikely and unsightly as a 360-pound man taking flight.
