Orange Blooded [2951]
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Clemson and Levi’s Stadium were both big winners
Jan 8, 2019, 12:31 PM
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From the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Jan 7, 2019
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Well, that settles it. Let’s have this thing in the Bay Area every year.
For all the angst and derision leading up to Monday night’s national championship game at Levi’s Stadium, the reality was a pulsating spectacle that finally brought glory to the 5-year-old facility. The place was packed, the performances were sensational, and Clemson left some magnificent impressions in its 44-16 victory over Alabama.
Head coach Nick Saban and his Crimson Tide must have left the building in shock after a sequence of plays hardly characteristic of the unbeaten, top-ranked defending champs. For Alabama fans used to a steady diet of royalty, those will be memories with regrettable staying power. But the real story was a 19-year-old quarterback, Clemson freshman Trevor Lawrence, picking apart a defense full of NFL prospects.
Tua Tagovailoa, the hero of Alabama’s title-game victory over Georgia last year, was hardly ineffective. He made some of the startlingly accurate, on-the-run throws that have made him a cult hero among Tide fans. But Lawrence’s performance was something altogether different — and his wide receivers were nothing short of fabulous. A single, third-quarter drive, featuring two one-handed catches by freshman Justyn Ross, capsulized an evening that established the Tigers’ superiority beyond question.
For the Bay Area, meanwhile, it was an outright triumph.
The weather was perfect, conveniently arriving between storms. Reports suggested that tickets on the secondary market had dropped to the $100-$200 range, but this was never going to be about local fans. It seemed that half the state of South Carolina packed the orange-clad Clemson section in the north-northwest sections of the stadium, and the Crimson Tide’s fans traveled in great numbers as well. There were scattered empty seats in a few of the upper-deck sections, but the mood was strictly major league: compelling theater before a captivated audience of 74,814.
And that’s something entirely new for this much-reviled facility.
The 49ers have yet to play a meaningful game at Levi’s, and the attendance is often an outright embarrassment. The 2016 Super Bowl (Denver beating Carolina 24-10) was a drag. The Pac-12 championship game has been misplaced here for years, failing to live up to expectations even when Stanford participated. The old San Francisco Bowl had a dandy at Levi’s in 2017, Purdue beating Arizona 38-35, but the Bay Area hardly noticed.
So this night amounted to fantasy for 49ers owner Jed York and his franchise, a blueprint for the future with fans streaming into Levi’s and the team a constant presence in the playoffs. It also served as an indictment for the Pac-12 Conference, which trudged through another unimpressive bowl season, going 3-4 with margins of victory of two points once and one twice, and was not taken seriously as a playoff contender. Monday night brought the real thing, and one can only imagine any Pac-12 team trying to resist the Clemson onslaught.
“Good is not good enough,” said a disconsolate Tagovailoa, his head bowed through most of a postgame interview session alongside Saban and defensive back Xavier McKinney. And when it comes to a game of this magnitude, there’s no room for regression.
With the game moments old, cornerback A.J. Terrell scored on a 44-yard interception, making Clemson the first team to score a defensive touchdown on Alabama’s first series since Saban became head coach in 2007. A missed extra-point try, leaving Clemson in front 14-13, was the sixth by Joseph Bulovas and Alabama’s ninth this year, worst among Division I teams.
On a 2nd-and-goal at the Clemson 1-yard line, what looked like a cinch touchdown run for Damien Harris was erased by a false-start penalty — and Alabama had to settle for a field goal in the second quarter. A late hit on McKinney, crashing into Ross when he was well out of bounds, aided a drive that led to a Clemson field goal and a 31-16 lead before halftime. And there was a terribly botched fake field goal, backup quarterback Mac Jones running into a wall of humanity and getting crushed by tackle Nyles Pinckney.
Saban can be prickly with the media, but he spoke with great admiration for Clemson and “the kind of lessons our kids can learn from a loss.” He took personal responsibility for “not doing a very good job,” and he actually thanked the media for “recognizing all the things we do well and all the interest you create for our sport.”
“Just an amazing night,” said Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney. “You heard a lot of talk this year about (Alabama being) the best ever. We were never in that conversation. But we’re the first 15-0 team (since the 19th century). We beat Notre Dame, we beat Alabama. You enjoy this moment, and you appreciate everything we did to get here.”
It’s odd to think that it took a college game, featuring a couple of teams from the other side of the country, to turn Levi’s Stadium into the football palace everyone hoped it would be. All things considered, we’ll take it.
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Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: bjenkins@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1
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