You like your number one team to be a seam-ripping behemoth unstoppable in all phases of the game. Sadly, you do not always get a Leviathan, fanboy, another example of reality foiling your preferences fo unstoppable tyrants in sport. Sometimes you get USC 2004, and sometimes you get Ohio State 2002, and sometimes you get the jalopy-borne asskick machine that is Alabama 2008.

This year’s Alabama team will not blow doors on anyone offensively, and is officially Krenzel-bad in terms of the passing game (100th nationally; in their 2002 run, tOSU ranked 92nd.) Auburn sits one spot higher in terms of total passing offense than the Crimson Tide, who have been a run-first sledgehammer on offense, pulverizing early and often with the run, playing field position, and asking John Parker Wilson throw a few fades and play-action passes along the way.

When your defense allows 13.1 points a game, you can afford to be cromagnon-compatible on offense. It is unflashy, unpretty, and everything that makes Alabama fans feel warm and frisky in their pants.

This leads us to Jesse Palmer, who has decreased the size of his tie knots over the course of the season but has not increased bloodflow to the important thinking gland located above his neck. First, we paraphrase an exchange from College Football Final with Robert Smith:

Robert Smith: Being number one’s like being the king. Everyone wants the power, but no one wants the Sword of Damocles hanging over them.

Jesse Palmer: I can’t even spell Damocles. (spits out piece of tinfoil he’s been chewing on)

Not a word from you, Jim Delany. We blame the decrepit and clearly broken Canadian education system for Jesse’s intellectual failures. This is mentioned to highlight Jesse Palmer’s spells of dumbness, first. Second, it leads us to the Bama-relevant point, which is that Palmer and others keep chalking up Atlanta as an insta-win for the Florida Gators, presumably because Florida’s scoring forty a game and OMGZ NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP SHOT.

Alabama doesn’t care about points; as designed, they’re happy to play grapple ball and turn the game into a rugby scrum if needs be. For those who haven’t watched them, think 2002 Ohio State in Armani. Chalking up a win over a well-coached Nick Saban team determined to sludge the game up and beat people senseless at all eleven positions on the field is insanity. (Okay, ten. John Parker Wilson is just busy handing off and crumbling into the fetal position, for the most part.)

It may be a model T with a boxing glove, but when and if it knocks you on your ass, you’ll curse yourself for laughing at the “OOOOOGGGAAHHHH” horn and tiny headlights on the approach. We pray to the assembled deities that Florida, if they get past South Carolina and Florida State, aren’t listening to anything Jesse Palmer has to say about anything.