Alabama favorite to win third straight title, but don't count on it

And then, as autumn settles in, Alabama will fight the same battle that has defined the sport forever. It's a battle that will inevitably include magic and

Michael Rosenberg|

And then, as autumn settles in, Alabama will fight the same battle that has defined the sport forever. It's a battle that will inevitably include magic and good fortune and unexplainable events in an era when we try to quantify everything. When the playoff arrives, college football will lose a little more of its innocence -- and as we know, the sport only has a few teaspoons of innocence left. Saban and his all-business model may win another national championship. But a century of college football says not to count on it.

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Published Aug 30, 2013 | Modified Aug 30, 2013

MICHAEL ROSENBERG

Michael Rosenberg is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, covering any and all sports. He writes columns, profiles and feature stories and has covered almost every major sporting event. He joined SI in 2012 after working at the Detroit Free Press for 13 years, eight of them as a columnist. Rosenberg is the author of “War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and America in a Time of Unrest.” Several of his stories also have been published in collections of the year’s best sportswriting. He is married with three children.

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