It is honestly hard to say. I love them all for different reasons. I was a student for the first 3. 2009 was awesome and surreal. I was a freshman in 2008, Saban had only been there a year and sustained success was just an unfulfilled promise. You could definitely tell the difference in the team that first game against Clemson and that whole 2008 season was awesome as we broke one rival streak after another against us, specifically LSU and Auburn, and took down all the teams that had been successful while we were down. I remember JPW was interviewed sometime in the season and said the team goals were to win 11 games and compete for the division. No one really expected more than to compete for the Conference title, though the hope was there. That was a thrilling SEC Championship game even though we lost. Take it to 2009, we went undefeated and got revenge on Florida and took down Tebow and the team that had dominated the conference for the last 5 years. Then we beat Texas, finally getting a win against them. People also forget that at the time Texas had been playing excellent football since Vince Young and the Rose Bowl and was in the title hunt every year. Beating them at the Rose Bowl was kind of historical too, since that is where Bama first became a national name. So basically 2008-2009 was a revenge romp, taking down all our rivals and kind of ending those 2000-2008 powers.
2011, we knew we were the best team in the nation and that the overtime loss to LSU was not indicative of the actual game-we dominated everywhere but on the scoreboard. Watching every team we needed to lose, lose on one weekend was amazing, and set up the revenge game where we dominated LSU and broke the back of that program.
2012, despite A&M loss, was one of the most dominating teams I’ve gotten to watch. I even got a ticket to the SEC Championship game and got to watch Amari steak away from me for the go-ahead TD bomb. Mosley tipped the 5 sec pass in front of me to seal the win. Then we absolutely dominated Notre Dame. I had non-football watching relatives over and they kept pulling for Notre Dame because “this isn’t even interesting”. The back-to-back gear was everywhere and it was super cool to be double reigning champs and go into the next season with a 5th year senior QB and a legit chance at a 3-peat.
2013 hurt, bad. We had dominated the whole season, it was my senior year and we just knew we were going to win the SEC and play FSU and win the National Title. I got to watch all that disappear in person as we let Auburn hang around, then tie the game with hardly any time left after that awesome 99yd TD. Then no one touched the returner all the way to the endzone and a team just as good as the 2012 team ended the season with nothing. I was at the Sugar Bowl too and watched us sleep walk to defeat at the hands of a 3 loss Oklahoma team.
Which made 2015 so awesome. We had been totally written off as a “dead Dynasty” by the whole nation, and it looked like AJ might be our last NC winning QB for a while. Everyone dogged us all season, but Coker helped us win the SEC, destroy MSU, and take Clemson down in an absolute thriller. The Dynasty was back on tract! One of my favorite teams-gave me that “blue-collar” feel like 2008.
Then this season I didn’t expect a whole lot (didn’t last year either, basically breaking in a new team) but we kept on winning. After imploding against Auburn I figured the season was done honestly, then we got the second chance, got revenge on Clemson, then that title game was an epic second half comeback with such promise for the next 2 seasons in what the freshmen were doing.
Sorry for the long post, got carried away.
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