Excuse me, I think I need to go run through a wall. On Thursday, video circulated on Twitter of Alabama’s strength coach, Scott Cochran, smashing the second place College Football Playoff National Championship trophy into pieces. Not only did he do that, he then took a dang sledgehammer to what was left of it after he slammed it to the ground. Here’s the video, originally from @pauljonesb on Twitter:
My biggest question is — is this the same runner-up trophy that Alabama was given last year after losing to Clemson in the title game?!
This is a pretty good motivational tool, if you ask me. Last year, in the CFP Semifinal, Alabama used motivation from fake newspaper headlines ahead of its matchup against Washington:
ESPN’s Holly Rowe tweeted a since-deleted photo from one of Bama’s meeting rooms, showing a sign that quoted “The National Media” as saying Bama’s overconfidence will mean a Washington win. Nobody has actually delivered that take (the closest was a Seattle Times article arguing that Bama fans, not players, might be overconfident), meaning Bama has so few doubters that it is actively manufacturing fake news about imaginary doubters. Gotta respect that.
We’ll see if it works Monday night in Atlanta, where the recent Las Vegas odds have the Tide as 3.5-point favorites over Georgia for the national championship.