FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.— Barrett Jones definitely was not going there.
Alabama’s All-American offensive lineman has spent five seasons with coach Nick Saban, and he knows better than to talk about stuff like legacies and the Crimson Tide’s place in history.
“Do you know what would happen if Nick Saban watched this interview and heard me say the D word?” Jones told a reporter who tried to lure him into the forbidden zone.
The D word would be dynasty, and it definitely is off-limits around Alabama. But make no mistake, if the Crimson Tide can beat No. 1 Notre Dame on Monday night, it will become the first team to win consecutive BCS championships and join a select list of college-football programs with three national titles in four years.
In short, Alabama will lay claim to one of the great runs in history.
“I think what we’re really focused on is what we have to do in this particular game,” Saban said moments after Alabama arrived in south Florida. “Michael Jordan always says it doesn’t make any difference how many game-winning shots I’ve made in the past. The only one that matters is the next one.”
Since The Associated Press started crowning a college-football champion in 1936, a team has repeated as champion 10 times, including Bear Bryant’s Alabama teams twice.
No team has won three straight titles in the poll era. The standard is three out of four, and only two teams have done that. Notre Dame won AP titles in 1946, ’47 and ’49. But that’s ancient history. Back then the final poll came out before the bowls were even played.
The other three-in-four-year champion was Nebraska, which won back-to-back AP titles in 1994 and ’95, and capped a remarkable run with a perfect season and coaches’ poll title in 1997, Tom Osborne’s final season as coach. Michigan was voted No. 1 in the final AP poll that year.
Over that four-year period, Nebraska went 49-2.
Alabama’s gone 48-5 since 2009, fueled in large part by the recruiting class of 2008. That group has produced eight NFL draft picks, including 2009 Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and star receiver Julio Jones.
Four members of that class still are with the Tide, all starters: Jones, safety Robert Lester, defensive end Damion Square and tight end Michael Williams. Linebacker Nico Johnson and guard Chance Warmack from the class of 2009 are the only other current players who have played for the two previous Alabama championship teams.
“I respect all the guys that came in in 2008,” Lester said Friday. “(Alabama) just came off a ... 7-6 season.”
It seems hard to believe now, but not everybody was convinced Saban would turn Alabama into a juggernaut at that point. The Tide had been down a while, and Saban was not far removed from two unimpressive NFL seasons. But he proved he hadn’t lost his touch in recruiting with that class.
“For those guys to believe in the system and to come in and help turn it around, it speaks wonders for those guys,” Lester said. “We’re down to the last four of us, playing in the national championship down in Miami, going out like this, there’s nothing more you can say about it.”
Certainly not the D word, right?
“I don’t want to use that and call us something that we might not be,” he said.
Good point.
The last time the D word was getting tossed around freely in college football was the 2005 season.  The last team to go back-to-back was Pete Carroll’s Southern California squad in 2003 and ’04.