As good as Alabama has been at the end of every football season under Nick Saban, winning four national championships in the last seven years, the Crimson Tide have been even better coming out of the gate.
Alabama is 6-0 in neutral-site openers under Saban and will put that perfection on the line Saturday night when the top-ranked Tide face No. 20 Southern California at AT&T Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington. Saban’s Tide opened last season’s championship run at the same locale, thumping Wisconsin 35-17.
“Opening-game successes come from more of an internal scoreboard,” Saban said in a news conference this week. “Where are we relative to doing the things we need to do to play winning football? Are we getting the kind of attention to detail, discipline and focus?
“There is no identity at all with this team right now, regardless of what’s been said or voted on.”
Neutral-site openers such as the Kickoff Classic and Pigskin Classic were prevalent in college football during the 1980s and 1990s, serving as a 12th game for their participants. They became extinct in 2002, when the NCAA allowed 12-game regular seasons in certain years, but then the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic in Atlanta was founded in 2008 with an inaugural matchup between Alabama and Clemson.