My NCAA Title Game Prediction

Here is my prediction for tonight's NCAA National Championship football game:

Texas 27, Alabama 16.

I know this runs against the prevailing "wisdom" of the sports media talking heads, who seem to only pay attention to what happened most recently with these teams. Texas squeaked by Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game, its vaunted offense looking rather unimpressive. And Alabama overpowered favored Florida in the SEC title match. But Nebraska may have had the best defense in the country this year and Florida was missing one of its vital defensive starters due to a suspension. The two contending teams need to be evaluated over the course of the season as a whole, not just by their most recent games. Especially when those games occurred a month ago! Texas has usually completely dominated their opponents this year while Alabama has slogged through several close contests.

Hopefully, you don't bet on sports and will take my prediction with a grain of salt. But my NFL predictions for this year were largely on-target, with me correctly predicting divisional titles for New England, Indianapolis, San Diego, Dallas, New Orleans, Minnesota, and Arizona. The only division I missed, the AFC North, was unexpectedly won by Cincinnati by only one game over my pick, Baltimore (which still finished "in the playoffs"). For what it's worth, I'm still sticking with my prediction of a Baltimore win over Minnesota in the Super Bowl.

One factor that I believe is skewing the opinion of others toward Alabama is the notion that the Southeastern Conference is pretty much invincible now. After all, it has won the last three national championships, splitting the titles between LSU and Florida. But past seasons, like most recent games, are not the best indicators about Alabama and Texas. Rather look at their current season records and judge for yourself.

Could I be wrong? Of course I could. But I am more likely to believe that Texas could blow out Alabama by an even larger margin than lose to them. Well, let's see what happens tonight!