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Despite the lopsided result last night, I continue to believe that these are two very evenly matched teams.  If they played ten games under similar conditions, they would likely go 5-5.

I was rooting for LSU, only for the reason that for my taste Alabama fans are a little too full of themselves.  In the broader historical picture LSU is an underdog, so that gave me an interest.

I did predict an Alabama victory, however.  I didn't have a chance to articulate the reason at length, but merely stated that they are too good to be beaten twice by the same team in one season.

There's a little more to it than that.

The edge in these types of matchups has to go to the team with the biggest chip on its shoulder.  Going into the game, this was clearly in Alabama's favor for the following reasons:

1) As mentioned, they recently had lost at home to the Tigers, even though their offense and defense outplayed them.  Their special teams lost the regular season game.  That's very frustrating.

2) Alabama knew it may be the best team in the country, yet they didn't even get to play in their conference championship game.  They had to sit home that week and watch LSU get all the glory on national TV.

3) The same thing happened to them last year, but it was ten times worse.  The dreaded Auburn Tigers denied them their SEC title.   Then they had to sit home and watch Auburn win a NC, and listen to Auburn fans razz them about it all this year.

 4)  We had seen signs of immaturity from the LSU players (bar fights, drug suspensions).  This may have caught up with them as they fell for their own hype and were distracted by playing close to home and family.  Also, they had guys like Ark Razor telling them that they had the best resume of any team in BCS history (which they did).  This contributed to them coming out of the gate overconfident, flat and out of sync.