SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Monday night will be the third time that Alabama and Clemson meet in the College Football Playoff National Championship, and it will also be the third time we see a matchup of the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the big game. Every year since 2015, either the Crimson Tide or the Tigers have been the top seed in the CFP, and the seniors on both squads are currently pushing the pace for a new record of FBS wins over a four-year span.
With all the similarities when it comes to recent success, the absurdity of Alabama's raw talent advantage tends to be overlooked.
The Tide, after all, have secured the top recruiting class in the country in seven out of the last eight seasons. Its 247Sports talent composite -- a method of ranking teams based on the recruiting ratings of the players currently on the roster, taking transfers and early departures into consideration -- ranks No. 2 in the nation behind Ohio State.
"It's the best group of players we've seen," Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables said on Saturday. "They hand pick the best of the best in the United States, and they get most of them. They didn't offer many of our guys, so you've got a little bit of -- you know, nobody's feeling sorry for us. Trust me, I get it. But the reality is they offered probably Tre Lamar, maybe both of our corners, A.J. [Terrell] and Trayvon [Mullen], and then Christian Wilkins. Didn't offer anybody else, none, zero. On the flip side, we recruited a bunch of their guys."
Venables said that there's "not much" talk of an underdog mentality or trying to play with a chip on the shoulder but that Clemson's players are aware of the talent difference because "they remember how the recruiting process went." Clemson has some of the best college football players in the country, and it's got one of only two 14-0 standing, but Alabama has always seemingly recruited more freaks.
"You can't go anywhere across the board and say, 'OK, we've got the favorable matchup here."' Venables said. "They've got excellent players. We just hope to be a little bit better on Monday night."
There is the urge to dismiss Venables's gushing regarding Alabama, and especially its offense, as leaning into the circus that is media day. We've been waiting all season to see if these two teams were the best and if they would play for it all in January, and now the game is here. Maybe there was some gamesmanship at hand in hyping up the opponent, but there's not much hyperbole in his analysis.
The secret for Clemson's success in 2018 has been the way it's not only developed top talent but retained so many of its highly ranked recruits all the way through their senior season. The Tigers' signing day recruiting rankings over the last four years have been as high as No. 7 and as low as No. 16, yet its team talent composite rating is No. 6.
Alabama still has more five-stars (12 to nine) and four-stars (51 to 37) on its roster, and it is often true that the Tide have their pick of the country's best when it comes to restocking the roster in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Clemson has been the only program to come close to matching the Tide's success over the last four years, routinely finishing ahead of recruiting powers like Ohio State and Georgia that do have rosters more similar to that of Alabama.
Clemson might not be able to go across the board and identify handfuls of favorable one-on-one matchups, but many of those highly-rated Tigers that contribute to a No. 6 total team talent ranking have three-plus years of College Football Playoff experience. The team's experience is the X-factor in a game where one team has a clear on-paper advantage.
It's the experience of winning on this stage, against this very team, that powers the belief in a Clemson victory.
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