The Best Game of Our Time

Alabama vs. Auburn, the Iron Bowl of 2013 is the best college football game I have ever seen. And it certainly has its place among the greatest games of all time, and maybe the best ending. Sure, The Play ("the band is on the field, the band is on the field!") was more unusual and novel and crazy, but the game was meaningless.
This was #1, defending national champ Alabama vs. #4 Auburn, in one of the most heated rivalries, with huge stakes, a chance at the title game, perhaps for both teams.
And what ensued was one of the craziest, most dramatic, exciting, unpredictable and downright amazing games any of us will ever see.
By now you've all heard or seen what happened (and if you didn't you don't care), the 99-yard touchdown, the late-game comeback TD by Auburn and of course the field goal return.
But I want to talk about Nick Saban, the arrogant jerk whose pride cost his team the game. Saban thinks he walks on water (and he has the results to back it up) and that anything he does is right. And if you buy into this way of doing things you will win. He thinks the success he's had is because of him, and not his players. Which is why he failed in the NFL (and hated it), because he couldn't relate to players who had their own proven track records. It's also why he threw his kickers under the bus after the game.
My big problem with Saban comes when he went for on 4th and 1 with about 5 minutes left, instead of trying a 30-yard field goal. I know his kicker had already missed 2, but a 30-yarder is probably a pretty good bet, for even a bad kicker, and it would have given the Tide a 2-score lead. But in Saban's world he can't envision how his team won't get 1 yard on 4th down, and if they do, it is the players' fault.
That of course set up the blown coverage on the Auburn touchdown pass which set up Saban's fatal mistake. Many people are saying "if his kicker is so bad, why attempt a 57-yarder?" I'm going to give him a pass on this one. Even a bad kicker should make 57-yarders way more often than a player should return a miss 108 yards. The problem with Saban here is he didn't seem to have the right personnel on the field to defend a potential return, and he didn't seem to have them prepared for it. Though in his classy post-game press conference he said he warned the players and told them to fan out, but damn kids didn't listen.

It's a good thing a game like this happened now, because next year, it won't be as exciting. With a 4-team playoff, Alabama would likely make it anyway, so even if they didn't rest players, which top teams probably will, the urgency will be gone and the stakes greatly reduced. And this has been my main objection to a playoff for as long as the debate has raged on: college football has the most special regular season of all sports, and a playoff system, of 16 or 8 or even 4 teams would take a lot of that away.