Quantifying GOATs

 That Heisman Trophy guy played little more than a half, and still his team won by four touchdowns.

The quarterback, a career backup until this year, threw for 464 yards and five touchdowns.

The running back lugged it 22 times for 79 yards and a score, and caught a pass for another score, and the offense piled up 621 yards and 33 first downs and had the football for an eternity, or whatever 37 minutes and 26 seconds constitute.

So maybe the quarterback, Mac Jones, was right when he called your 2020 national champions, the 13-0 Alabama Crimson Tide, the greatest college football team ever. But only for now.

Look. It's impossible to argue that the 'Bamas weren't especially juggernaut-y this season. They didn't lose a game. No one but Florida came closer to them than 15 points. And in the national championship game, which the 'Bamas won 52-24 over Ohio State, their Heisman Trophy winner, wide receiver DeVonta Smith, left the game with a hand injury early in the third quarter.

By that time, of course, he'd already caught a dozen balls for 215 yards and three scores.

And after that, all Alabama did was outscore the Buckeyes 17-7 the rest of the way.

This against an Ohio State team that was itself undefeated, and that destroyed No. 2 Clemson 49-28 in the Sugar Bowl. 

So, OK, then. Maybe this Alabama team is the greatest ever. 

The problem with these pronouncements, however, is there's no way of actually quantifying this. If Alabama was as dominant this season as few college football teams in recent memory, that memory also includes several other of Nick Saban's teams at Alabama Football Inc., and the 1971 Nebraska Cornhuskers. and the 1969 Texas Longhorns, and a few scattered Notre Dames and Miamis and Oklahomas and Ohio States. 

Heck. Go back far enough, and you can throw in the Doc Blanchard/Glenn Davis Army teams, too.

College football in 2020 is vastly different from college football in 1945 or 1969 or even the 1980s, of course, so it's likely this Alabama team would have little problem with many of the aforementioned teams. Players now are bigger and fasters and stronger by quantum leaps than even 20 or 25 years ago. So it's a fool's errand to try to compare teams from such vastly different eras of the game.

All you can do, really, is measure how dominant a team was relative to its era. And these 'Bamas are definitely in the team photo in that regard.

And now it's on to the next era.