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This story appears in ESPN The Magazines Dec. 26 / Jan. 2 Issue. Subscribe today!AN HOUR BEFORE the sidelines at the SEC championship game are lined with Southern football dignitaries. All available previous MVPs of SEC title games are here, along with current coaches of teams that didnt make the game and a pair of television news desks, one from ESPN, the other from CBS.Retiring play-by-play man Verne Lundquist greets a receiving line of well-wishers at the CBS desk, all while sidestepping Alabamas warm-up drills. The defending national champ is preparing for a game it will win 54-16 over Florida to remain undefeated and formalize its invitation to the College Football Playoff.These dudes are so big its a little scary, says former Gators QB Danny Wuerffel, extending his hand after waiting in line.No, Uncle Verne replies. Whats scary is that most of them are still teenagers.Anyone who bought the 2016 college football preview magazines last summer will remember the questions. How will Alabama replace Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry? How will the Crimson Tide account for losing quarterback Jake Coker, a 23-year-old transfer from Florida State with five years experience? How will they replace 11 starters? (Those questions were posed in ESPN The Magazines preview by the same scribe you are reading right now.)Alabama entered the season with the SECs least experienced roster. Ohio State did the same in the Big Ten. Ditto for Clemson: bottom of the ACC. But it was actually much starker than that. Phil Steele, the king of preseason mags, uses a five-part formula to determine experience, and he ranked the Tide roster 116th out of 128 FBS teams. Clemson was ranked 101st. Ohio State was dead last at 128th.So if youre scoring at home -- and recruits are -- then three of this years best four teams were also among its youngest, somehow surviving one of the most unpredictable regular seasons in recent memory. The holdout is Washington. The Pac-12 champ ranked fourth in its conference and 43rd overall in experience, with only four returning senior starters but a whopping 80 percent of the roster having already played enough to earn a varsity letter.It really does go against what I guess youd call conventional coaching wisdom, says Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, who returned two senior starters from his 2015 team that went 12-1 and finished the year ranked fourth in the AP poll. This year the team is 11-1 and will play Clemson in the CFP semifinals. But I would also say, OK, who are those two seniors and who are your juniors? I like those juniors I have in the middle of my defense. And I really like that junior I have under center leading my offense in J.T. Barrett.They say the same at Clemson about their quarterback, Deshaun Watson. Along with his fellow juniors -- running back Wayne Gallman and wide receiver Mike Williams -- hes had to carry a roster heavy on underclassmen to a much higher degree of difficulty than a year ago, when Clemson pushed Alabama in the title game.I know its a cliché to talk about having another coach out on the field, but thats what Deshaun is, says Clemsons actual coach, Dabo Swinney. In the end, we can only run so many drills, watch so much film and install so many plays. When those young guys are out there and its time to actually run those plays, then its Deshaun who is looking them in the eyes. Freshmen or not, they are going to do what they have to do to not let him down.That pressure of not wanting to become the weak link in the chain is indeed a great motivator. A kid who spent the past few seasons watching Watson lead Clemson to a stack of prime-time wins doesnt want to be the one who causes that pipeline to rupture.And that brings us back to Alabama.My single biggest fear every day was that I did not want to be the guy who caused the winning to stop, Henry says. Standing along that same Georgia Dome sideline watching his former Tide teammates, he is straight-faced serious. He recalls his freshman year in 2013, joining the team as it came off consecutive BCS national championships and its third in four years. One year removed from high school, he carried the football just 36 times. Upperclassmen incessantly reminded him of his responsibilities.So did his phone. It was blowing up all the time with texts and calls from former Alabama players, Henry says. You better listen to the coaches, you better keep this going, you better stick with the Process. I didnt even know these guys. But now I do the same thing. Ill be doing it here tonight.Ah yes, the Process. When Nick Saban used to drop his trademark mantra, it was greeted by those outside Tuscaloosa -- and some inside the city limits -- with eye rolls and bingo calls of Drink! Such attitudes have since vanished, pounded into the ground by the win-loss record that has also buried Bamas SEC rivals. In the early days, when hed visit the living rooms of recruits, Saban would preach the programs relentless attention to every detail as a way to shed light on his grandiose plans. But now that those plans have come to historic fruition, that speech has changed. Either youre on board with the Process or you arent. Not on board? Enjoy your time playing elsewhere. If you are, well need your ring size.There is a way we do things at Alabama and they arent easy, but we arent looking for players who are looking for easy, Saban explained in February on national signing day after inking a class ranked second best in the nation by ESPN.com. I think what weve been able to accomplish here makes it easy for kids to identify what we are about. If they think they can fit into that, and we think they can fit into that, then I think the potential benefits are fairly evident.Thats code for Why yes, at Alabama we love five-star athletes. But only the ones who can hack it.The crown jewel in that 2016 recruiting class was a quarterback from the Houston area named Jalen Hurts, the son of a high school football coach. Hurts size and strength were off the charts, as were his football IQ and his academic record. Per Sabans freshman policies, the 18-year-old doesnt talk to reporters. An early enrollee, he already played the role of Watson as his new team practiced to play Clemson in the title game last January. Now he has a chance to lead his team to a victory in this years version of that same game and become the first true freshman QB to win a national title since Oklahomas Jamelle Holieway in 1985.People say, Well, how can you win with a freshman quarterback? says Alabama radio color commentator Phil Savage, a former NFL general manager who deals with college footballs best players annually as executive director of the Senior Bowl. But they arent doing it with just any old freshman quarterback. Jalen Hurts is special. He fits. And Alabama is fortunate enough to be in a position where they dont just sign five-star recruits. They sign the ones that fit.That fortunate position Bamas in is the top, where the view is nice and the shopping list nicer. Over the past four years, Bama has inked classes ranked first, first, first and second. Ohio State has never dropped below seventh, while Clemson has spent the past two years in the top eight. Only heavyweights like them can afford not to play the waiting game with their prospects. Because while beggars cant be choosers, choosers rarely have to be beggars.Sure, college coaches will tell you that todays high school recruits arrive more football-ready than ever before, thanks to prep programs that have become more aggressive with both their playbooks and their training programs. But experience still matters for nearly all the rest of college football. Washington, which has hovered from 19th to 45th in recruiting, needs its players to stick around. Colorado went worst to first in the Pac-12 South with its experience-heavy roster (ninth in the nation), and Michigan State did the complete opposite in the Big Ten as it hit the bottom of its cycle as an annual fifth-year-player factory. According to Steele, the Spartans were ranked 117th in the nation in experience and 13th in the Big Ten. They finished 3-9.The goal is to create an environment of winning, Saban explains in what sounds like total coachspeak but is in fact, well, fact. Seniors and alums expect a certain level of success, and in turn, they teach the kids who have just arrived to expect that level of success. Only a certain type of young man can handle that. And if you can handle that, then it doesnt matter how old you are.But it does matter where you play. NHL Jerseys . Blackwood, 28, has played the last three seasons in the San Diego Padres system, including the past two summers with Class AA San Antonio of the Texas League. Wholesale NHL Jerseys . After dropping their final six games of December, the Wild opened the new calendar year with four consecutive wins. Following a loss to Colorado on Saturday, Minnesota rebounded the following night to blank Nashville 4-0, but then had the tables turned on them Tuesday. https://www.cheapnhljerseysjustwholesale.com/ . Supported by three-run homers from Jayson Werth and Wilson Ramos, the young right-hander went seven strong innings in the Washington Nationals 8-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night. NHL Jerseys 2020 .35 million, one-year contract that avoided salary arbitration. Plouffe batted .254 with 14 home runs and 52 RBIs in 477 at-bats last season, his second as a regular in the lineup. Cheap NHL Jerseys .C. -- After a listless first half, the Washington Wizards used a big third quarter run to beat the Charlotte Bobcats Bradley Beal scored 21 points and the Wizards used a 17-0 run in the third quarter to take control of what had been a close game and beat the Bobcats 97-83 on Tuesday night. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Pool play is over for the Australia mens basketball team after the Aussies defeated Venezuela 81-56 on Sunday night.Australia (4-1) had already secured the No. 2 seed in the quarterfinals before the game and rested point guard Patty Mills, whose 20.5 points per game ranks second at the Rio Games. The U.S. holds the No. 1 seed in Group A.The Olympic experience came to an end for Venezuela (1-4), which was playing in the teams second games. It placed 11th at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.The Austtralians jumped out to a 16-2 lead in the first quarter and never trailed.dddddddddddd Aussie Chris Goulding scored a game-high 22 and hit four 3-pointers. Australia shot 53 percent from the field while Venezuela connected on just 35 percent of its attempts. The Venezuelans made just seven field goals in the first and fourth quarters combined.Anthony Perez led Venezuela with 12 points. ' ' '