The Night They Took Old Dixie Down

“You take what you need and you leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the very best.”

Robbie Robertson, The Band

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When the sports world woke up on the morning of December 30, 2014, all was well in the realm of Southeastern Conference Football. After all, the league that had dominated the college football world for the last ten years had done pretty well in their bowl games up to that point, and there seemed to be nothing on the horizon that would suggest that anything out of the ordinary was going to happen.

Prior to the 30th, the SEC had seen South Carolina beat The U. (a barely above-average Miami), Arkansas beat the hapless (this year) Texas Longhorns, and new member Texas A&M (it’s hard to consider a team from Texas as part of the South EASTERN Conference) defeat West Virginia, as the conference’s up-to-that-point aura of invincibility seemed to be as safe as a 21 point fourth quarter lead.

Even on the 30th, Georgia seemed to keep the SEC train rolling on down the tracks as they took down Louisville in the legendary Belk Bowl. That was four wins in four games, and the best was still yet to come, as the five highest rated teams from the SEC West, the self proclaimed “best conference in college football,” were scheduled to play five games in the next two and a half days. Indeed, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Auburn and Alabama had all been ranked somewhere near or at the top of the rankings all season. Any good Southerner knew they had the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama covering their backs. They had their pride and joy, the entire heart of Dixie going for them.

But this year, sometimes even a 21 point lead has proven to not be safe. And, in keeping with this wild and woolly bowl season, at just about that time, strange things started to happen to SEC teams.

LSU played Notre Dame on that night of the 30th, and that shouldn’t have posed that much of a problem. After all, the Irish had just been soundly throttled in their last game of the season by the USC Trojans by a lopsided score of 49 to 14. And SEC teams ALWAYS seemed to be able to beat all of those “Yankee teams.” But not this time. Notre Dame pulled out a last second, three point win over LSU 31 – 28, and the SEC had their first loss.

But the SEC had a team ready to restore order as the Ole Miss Rebels, a team who had earlier in the season defeated perennial conference superpower Alabama, was all set to play Texas Christian (TCU) on the 31st. TCU had been one of the teams that thought they were going to be invited to be in the four team playoff, but were instead replaced by Ohio State after the last game of the season. Although a very good team, TCU was supposed to fold when faced up against a team from the powerful SEC West. Only, no one told TCU they were supposed to lose. They stomped Ole Miss by a score of 42 to 3 in the Peach Bowl. Maybe a Big 12 power was just as good as “an equally powerful SEC team?”

But Mississippi State was next up and they had even risen up to Number One in the nation for a few weeks. All they had to do was beat Georgia Tech, a team that still ran the Triple Option offense (a version of the Wishbone, if you remember that). And the offense of the 1970’s turned out to be more than what Mississippi State could handle. Final score in this Orange Bowl, Georgia Tech 49 to MSU’s 34. Now an ACC team had pole-axed a mighty SEC West team.

But, alas, there were still the league’s bell cows, the nearly-defending champion Auburn (they had lost in last season’s finale in the last seconds) and current Number One team in the nation, the Alabama Crimson Tide, still to come. The cream of the crop. The pride of Dixie. Two stud teams. And two chances to restore order on New Year’s Day. (Missouri doesn’t count. They are so new to the conference, they still seem like a Big 12 team.)

Auburn was to play Wisconsin (in the Outback Bowl), the team that had been crushed in the Big Ten Conference Championship by Ohio State 59 to nothing. Mississippi State and Mississippi losing to Georgia Tech and TCU was okay, because THEY were at least losing to SOUTHERN teams. Auburn, a team from the SEC was supposed to beat Wisconsin, a team from the Big Ten. That’s what SEC teams did for a living. All the time. At least, they USED to do it. Because, that was then, and this was this year. Wisconsin beat Auburn 34 to 31. SEC backers should have started to mutter phrases like, “Rut-Roh.”

But, they still had Bama going against Ohio State in one of the two playoff games to help determine the champions of college football. The rest of the SEC could lose all they want, this Bama team had won three of the last five NCAA championships. They were Number One ranked, Number One seeded, and Number One in the hearts of bettors, as they were favored by 9 1/2 points and thought to be one of the surest bets of the entire bowl season. They also had Alabama’s coach Nick Saban, the South’s (if not college football’s) very best coach, kind of like the Robert E. Lee of college coaching.  Strategist. Leader. Motivator of men. He would take out this Big Ten Ohio State team in a game played AT the New Orleans Sugar Bowl, of all places, and go on and likely win it all again this season. Only, Ohio State had other ideas.

Ohio State beat Alabama 42 to 35 and the mighty SEC had NOBODY left to play for the championship. The five teams SEC fans would put up against ANY five teams in the country had ALL LOST. The South had not lost anything like that since they handed over their swords in 1865 (which, if you look at the symmetry of the math, was now 150 years ago). Nick Saban had to walk across the field in defeat and shake hands with some Yankee team from Ohio. Hell, this WAS Appomattox all over again. The SEC had thought they had something going with this college football thing.

But, over a three day period, poof, it was all gone. Their championship hopes, their pride, their egos, their invincibility. For an SEC fan, the most stinging defeat was seeing the Crimson Tide get rolled. It was seeing Nick Saban, like Robert E. Lee did 150 years ago, having to surrender to “a Yankee” in defeat.

Ohio State didn’t just win a game that night, though.  It was the Night They Took Old Dixie Down.