Alabama, Texas took different paths after 2009 BCS game, but not because of it | Goodbread
It's easy to stretch how one defines the phrase "turning point" when it comes to the Alabama football team's BCS national championship win over Texas to crown the 2009 season in the Rose Bowl. The twelve years of aftermath − starkly different fortunes for both programs − makes it nearly impossible not to.
So let's get this out of the way up front: turning points aren't causational. They don't steer fate. And while there can be no question that Alabama 37, Texas 21 was indeed a turning point by a more conservative definition, it didn't drive Alabama's successes nor Texas' failures thereafter. And it certainly won't have the least bit of impact when the Crimson Tide (1-0) and Texas (1-0) battle this Saturday (11 a.m. CT, FOX) with players who were anywhere from 6-10 years old at the time. Alabama's two best, quarterback Bryce Young and linebacker Will Anderson Jr., don't even recall it. And Young lived 5 minutes from the Rose Bowl on the night Courtney Upshaw's fourth-quarter fumble recovery definitively put it out of reach.
"I was pretty young. I really don't have any memory about that game," Young said Monday. "Probably was watching college football, probably had it on, but just don't remember it."
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The reality is that turning points are merely markers of time, separating differences without creating them.
And what a difference it's been.
For Alabama, a run of six national championships in 13 years − a dynasty by any definition − began that night. For Texas, it's pretty much been a nightmare ever since.
Sixty-seven losses in 12 seasons. Alabama's had 17 in the same stretch.
The Longhorns have been through four head coaches since then, and four times they've not even been bowl-eligible. With a couple exceptions, Longhorns bowl travel hasn't even left state borders, mostly bouncing between the Texas Bowl and Alamo Bowl for a week that typically gives players a chance to experience places and things they've never seen before. Some getaway.
Remember the Alamo? How could Texas forget?
Alabama has been there.
Following the retirement of former coach Gene Stallings after the 1996 season, the Crimson Tide stumbled through an awfully rough patch of its own. Four losing seasons over 10 years. NCAA sanctions. Independence Bowls and Music City Bowls forgotten as quickly as played. By the time that stretch ended with the hiring of Nick Saban, Alabama's place in college football had to be rebuilt. Its tradition, while still revered by its fan base, was viewed as more of a relic by top recruits.
But that had begun to change well before Alabama traveled to Pasadena to play Texas, and conversely, the circumstances that cratered Longhorns football into mediocrity went a great deal deeper than the outcome of a single game.
And yet, it's a single game this weekend that will spark 12-year-old history. A Texas win over Alabama would be hailed as a cleansing. A small but significant righting of all that went wrong for burnt orange since their last meeting.
A new turning point.
One that would signal more weight than it could ever begin to carry.
Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama-Texas BCS game gets too much credit for their divergent paths
