How Alabama Won the 2018 NCAA Title

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Being Blinded by Upside. Sometimes the risks of a decision are not visible or obvious. We may be in a familiar situation and overestimate our abilities and mentally minimize the risks since we have done something many times without a problem. Other times, it may be a new situation and we run into the problem of “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Be focused on, but not blinded by the upside of your decision but be sure you can identify and live with the downside. Alabama football coach Nick Saban took an enormous risk in going for the upside of a win in the 2018 championship game. He was also one of the few who understood the the downside of his decision

Being Blinded by the Upside is one of the Seven Deadly Stupidities.

It was halftime of the 2018 NCAA Football Championship and Alabama was trailing Georgia by a score of 13-0. As the second half started, the Alabama quarterback, Jalen Hurts, was on the bench. Going into the game, Hurts was 26-2 over the previous two seasons, with one of the losses being in the previous year’s championship game. The new quarterback to start the second half for Alabama was unknown freshman Tua Tagovailo.

At the game-watching party I attended, people went crazy. What the heck was Alabama coach Nick Saban thinking?  How could he throw a freshman out there in the middle of the biggest game of the year? Oh goodness, now Alabama won’t cover the point spread.

So, what was Coach Saban thinking? Let’s learn a little about Saban and Alabama football and you will realize the logic used by Saban to take such a risk to go for the upside despite the obvious downside.

Like many things in life, success begets success in college football. If Alabama keeps winning, more of the top high school prospects will want to play there, showcase their talents on the best team in the biggest games, and enhance their chances of getting drafted into the National Football League and earning financial security for their families. 

In order to get a sense of how competitive it is to get on the field at a place like Alabama, let me tell a story where I have some personal connection. A relative of mine was being inducted into the University of Florida Sports Hall of Fame and I was in the audience. Florida has won national championships in football, just not as many as Alabama. 

One of the other inductees was Ericct Rhett, a Florida running back who went on to play seven seasons in the NFL.  He was an accomplished player in the NFL, but what about his time at Florida? Like all heavily recruited scholarship players at top schools, Rhett was a superstar in high school. As he told the story during his acceptance speech, he landed at Florida on a defensive scholarship, but his heart was on offense. And why not? He just finished running people over and scoring touchdowns at will in high school while being a great defensive player and two-time state wrestling champion. 

Like Coach Saban, his quarterback Hurts was a winner. Hurts was a powerlifter growing up and had the unusual combination of arm strength and foot speed that made him difficult to defend. He could beat you with his passing and just as easily break off a run where he would bulldoze defensive players out of the way or simply outrun them. 

In his first season as a starter at Alabama, Hurts led the team to a 13-1 record, before losing the national championship by the thinnest of margins to a miracle comeback by Georgia. That season included 11 straight wins at one point. In his second season, he again led the team to a 13-1 record entering the championship.

So, how could Coach Saban pull Hurts at halftime? Despite all the success the team and Hurts had going into the game, Alabama was trailing at halftime and was ineffective on offense, barely recording positive yardage in the half. Time for a huge, but calculated risk: all part of being blinded by the upside.

Tua came in to start the second half and led the team to one of the most amazing high-stakes comebacks in all of sports. Highlights included a last-minute touchdown pass to seal the victory. 

Did Saban know Tua was capable of such things? Only Saban knows whether this is true but go back to the example of Ericct Rhett at Florida. If Tua was able to fight his way into the number two quarterback slot as freshman, we know he was good. He had to climb his way up from the bottom of the class. And remember, just to get on the team at Alabama, you had to be an all-world high school quarterback. So, Tua faced incredible competition (like Rhett) to make it to the number two quarterback position. Did Alabama and Tua get a little lucky in that second half, sure, but that’s sports.

Saban was losing the biggest game on the biggest stage and he made the decision that he would do whatever it took to win, even if it meant benching his star quarterback in favor of an unknown freshman. 

Saban had a massive database to use in his decision. He coached Tua every day in practice and knew what he could do. Saban was also wiling to live with the consequences and worst-case outcomes of his decision. It would have been easy to leave Hurts in the game and if Alabama lost, there would be little criticism of Hurts, Saban, or Alabama football beyond what a great game Georgia played and how they bottled up the Alabama offense.

But he didn’t care since he made his unemotional decision and was willing to live with the downside. Saban had an accurate factual base for his decision:  Hurts was having a bad game, Alabama was losing, and he had Tua ready to go. Of course, Saban wanted the upside of a win, but more importantly, he understood and was willing to accept the downside of his decision.

Afterword

The year after the dramatic Tua-led Alabama win in the 2018 National Championship, Tua was named the starting quarterback and Hurts was the backup. To advance to the playoffs and have a shot at back-to-back national championships, the 12-0 Alabama team needed to beat Georgia in the SEC championship game. Midway through the game, with Alabama trailing, Tua went down with an injury. What happened next? You guessed it, Hurts came in and led Alabama to a wild come-from-behind victory and a spot in the playoff.

The next year Hurts left Alabama and played his final college year at Oklahoma, another perennial college-football powerhouse. He broke several school records and posted a 12-2 record, which included a loss in the playoff semifinals.  A win in that semifinal playoff game would have set up an Alabama vs Oklahoma and Tua vs Hurts National Championship game.

Both Tua and Hurts went on to successful NFL careers. Hurts and his Philadelphia Eagles had the best record in the NFL in 2022 and lost in the Super Bowl by a field goal. He subsequently signed one of the largest contracts in NFL history.

After the departures of Tua and Hurts, Saban added his sixth national championship a year later.