Alabama beats Notre Dame in college football playoffs, advances to national title game

ARLINGTON, Texas - A Rose Bowl national semifinal widely forecast to lack suspense wound up lacking suspense, unless you want to count the art exhibit. The art exhibit wowed.

In reaching its fifth College Football Playoff national championship game in the past six seasons and its eighth title game in the past 12, Alabama brandished some of the loveliest offense ever seen in college football, at least since LSU last year. So while its 31-14 win Friday over decided underdog Notre Dame played out predictably, the Heisman Trophy candidates on its celestial offense played out dazzlingly.

DeVonta Smith, the out-of-this-world wide receiver who was named Associated Press national player of the year, roamed the field to complete tasks of exquisite difficulty, or sometimes just roamed the field with a football. He caught seven passes for 130 yards and three touchdowns, two featuring breezy runs. "I wouldn't be able to do it without them," he said of his mates.

Najee Harris, the running back with 3,700-odd career yards, took the welcome recent-years fashion of leaping tacklers and elevated it further during an early 53-yard run, elevating himself above a defender who grabbed only air, with Harris's legs splaying and the audience gasping before Harris rearranged himself to travel further. "I don't know why I'm surprised every time he does it," tight end Miller Forristall said, "because he's been doing it for three years. But still, you're like, 'Jeez.' " Harris rushed 15 times for 125 yards.

Mac Jones got them the football, a good idea at which he was great, completing 14 of his first 15 passes and 25 of his full 30. "I've always said this: They make me look a lot better than I am," Jones said.

The way it all moved looked all futuristic as the lead sprang to 21-7 across the first 21 minutes, at least until Notre Dame plied its general excellence and particular adjustments to tame the show from there.

Of course, relatively few observed any of this in person, with the crowd a pandemic-sparse 18,373 at AT&T Stadium. While those 18,373 did prove a reason for relocating the game from Pasadena, Calif., its home since near the beginning of time, they did sit indoors amid a Texas field without any peek at purple mountains. They were few enough that at times it seemed a coveted appearance on the Brobdingnagian video screen might come to each and every one of them. They sang "Don't Stop Believin'" in the fourth quarter as throatily as they could.

The schools' marching bands played only on that screen and only in past appearances, meaning some clarinetist or other might have graduated without ever playing at a Rose Bowl, only to emerge from bygone to play a Rose Bowl.

Yet if a band on a board is a bummer, a Tide on offense is a thriller, more than capable of rocketing 79 yards in seven plays with a first possession, 97 yards in five watery plays with a second and 84 yards in six plays with a third. By that point, Alabama (12-0) had the 21-7 lead, 260 yards and 14.4 per spacious play. It had faced only one third down, a 3rd-and-1 that seemed some egregious inconvenience in need of scrupulous examination. Jones sneaked hurriedly for the first.

By contrast, watching Notre Dame felt like watching some admirable stagecoach, which for a long while kept the Alabama offense sidelined as a witness, always a wise approach. To pare the score from 14-0 to 14-7, the Fighting Irish (10-2) and their all-time winningest quarterback, Ian Book, took 15 plays to go 75 yards and gobble 8:03 of clock, a feat of patience and plotting and plodding. The trail further thickened with two Notre Dame timeouts and one officiating review, making the whole thing seem measurable by sundial. Ten of the last 11 plays went by ground and air to one workhorse, running back Kyren Williams, so it felt just when they went ahead on 4th-and-goal and let him score a one-yard Rose Bowl touchdown.

Of course, Smith soon roamed again, taking a short pass through the middle and over to the right sideline for a 34-yard touchdown, with the only drawback his hard fall into the end zone upon his backside. He made a brief visit to the injury tent, then returned to wreak more torment. "We just needed more firepower, quite frankly," Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly said, repeatedly dismissing the timeworn narrative of Notre Dame's huge-game shortcomings by adding, "There is no other, wider story."

A novelty did emerge with 50 seconds left in the half, when Alabama saw reason to bring in a punter, proving it had brought one. He's Charlie Scott.

Hi, Charlie.

He's the younger brother of JK Scott, the Green Bay Packers punter whom fanatics will remember for his 10-year stay as Alabama punter. Charlie Scott doesn't turn up on national punting statistics lists because his mere 2.4 punts per game don't qualify, which does seem draconian toward the idle punters out there. He punted 45 yards to a fair catch at the Notre Dame 11-yard line.

Nice seeing you, Charlie.

He would end up punting thrice for a 42.3-yard average.

Nice job, Charlie.

By his first appearance, though, Notre Dame clearly had figured out some things. Alabama began to find gaps more clogged and passing gains less scandalous. Its yards per play dwindled to around a sighing eight. "We were a little tentative [early]," Kelly said. "We shut our feet down. You can't do that against highly skilled players. . . . If you shut your feet down for a second, they are gone. We got a little better at that."

Yet still, there was this: At the end of a 62-yard scoring drive in the third quarter that featured a 40-yard pass and run by yet another phenomenal Alabama receiver, John Metchie III, Jones threw from the 7-yard line to the last available inch of air next to the right pylon. Smith, who has "done as much for our team as any player who could do for any team," in Coach Nick Saban's words, made the hard catch like somebody from the NFL, leaving only the question of whether he got a foot down.

He got two, and it looked like the highest football art.