AL.com's Michael Casagrande shared a painful revelation about the team he covered for a decade and witnessed three championships from between the 2015 season and the 2020 COVID-19-stricken campaign: no one outside the Yellowhammer State is talking about the Alabama Crimson Tide anymore.
Per Casagrande, in response to the program being projected to finish sixth in the SEC in an SEC Media Days preseason media poll, "It’s just a reminder of how invisible Alabama’s been in recent years. ... Straight up, nobody talks about Alabama outside of this state anymore."
That, on the surface, is good news for the Auburn Tigers. After all, why would the Tigers want the Tide to get any positive attention?
Dig deeper, though, and you'll find that this is very bad.
The Iron Bowl benefits when Alabama is nationally relevant
For one, Alabama's irrelevance means that the Iron Bowl would be getting more recognition. Sure, ESPN still brings out the best in its video-editing department and whips up a serious hype video on College GameDay that showcases how important the game is to the state.
Still, "The Game" has become a much bigger tradition in the sport over the last decade because of Auburn's fall from grace and the Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines' consistent competitiveness. At least the Tide kept attention on the game, though.
Now? With the Tigers having lost five games in a row and Alabama most recently embarrassing itself in the Rose Bowl during a 38-3 loss to the Indiana Hoosiers, the state of Alabama and its tradition-rich SEC football teams will be put in the corner by national talking heads.
Auburn is even more irrelevant than Alabama
If the Tide is irrelevant months after both a CFP appearance and even a CFP win over the Oklahoma Sooners, realistically, what does that make Auburn to the country? If the team that has won six straight Iron Bowls and has made the CFP three times in the NIL era is irrelevant, what does that make the blood rival that hasn't had a winning season during that stretch?
When NIL first came around, Alabama was one of the states slated to benefit players the most. Sponsorships for local players who don't have pro sports to compete with in their markets was a benefit for the Yellowhammer State.
Now? A state like Alabama is at a disadvantage because there simply aren't a large number of billionaire donors who can be needle-moving third-party sponsors. At least AU is in a better spot than UAT in that regard, though.
It's unclear what fixes this issue. Tommy Tuberville has led an effort in Congress to curb both portal movement and many years of eligibility into a player's mid-20s, but the richest schools in the Big Ten and the Lone Star State are simply going to win the most high school recruiting battles. Those schools will win the recruiting battles that are dictated by money. The economy only seems to be getting worse every day, so more and more recruiting battles will be dictated by money.
It's sad to see the state with the pound-for-pound proudest tradition on the gridiron, at every level, fall behind in the financial rat race. That's just the way this world is moving, though. Big markets mean big money, and smaller college towns won't be able to keep up.
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