COLUMBIA, MO. – Afterward, after No. 1 Alabama's inevitable win over a Missouri team still finding its way in the SEC, Alabama players ran underneath the bowels of Faurot Field as fans on the concourse above leaned over and shouted, over and over, "Roll Tide!"
They had rolled again, this machine of a team head coach Nick Saban has put together. This time it was a 42-10 win that pushed the Crimson Tide to 6-0 (3-0 in the SEC) and reaffirmed its unrivaled place among the top of college football, today, this season and over the past four years.
The players rushed by with the air of those who know this. They were ebullient with the surety of those who can feel in the cheers above and in the mounting wins and in that rush of a well-earned victory that they are at the top of what they do.
Then, after they'd gone, Saban appeared.
He ran, too, but his gait was faster, the energy around him as intense and focused as any of the athletes. But the air of celebration and achievement had been replaced by a grim steeliness. Saban ran so quickly two state troopers huffed and puffed to keep up with him. Even then, after a blowout, there wasn't any time to waste.
Then that streak of intensity that has made Saban who he his and Alabama what it once was – whether it is focus or ambition or anger or determination or obsession or hunger or some combination – vanished with him into the locker room. Only the chants remained, the fervent calls from above reminding anyone listening that Alabama's domination over college football has been nearly total since Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007.
On this day, a rainy affair that included a 30-minute lightning delay and deluged conditions, that domination looked like this: Mizzou gaining just three yards on the ground –
