ARLINGTON, Texas — Ding. Round Four.
College football’s top two programs will once again meet to decide the national championship next Monday. No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Clemson both easily dispatched with their semifinal opponents Saturday before turning their attention back to each other. Neither side is growing tired of their annual match-up yet.
“I love going up against them because it definitely brings out your best,” Clemson senior Christian Wilkins said. “I was joking earlier saying they should just be a part of our conference. We’ve got to play them every year.”
Wilkins and his classmates are headed toward their third national championship showdown with the Crimson Tide. Alabama won the first meeting in 2015. Clemson returned the favor in 2016. Last year, they met in a semifinal game and Alabama won on its way to another championship.
Clemson senior Hunter Renfrow wouldn’t quite go so far as to say the Tigers’ locker room was pulling for Alabama, but an opportunity to even their series will be well received in Clemson despite the challenge.
“I won’t say hoping, but obviously they’re up 2-1 on us seniors,” said Renfrow, who caught a title-clinching touchdown pass in the 2016 meeting. “We’re exciting to go back and make it .500 and be over .500 in national championship games.”
Wilkins said it was too early to attempt to put this rivalry in a larger context with other two-team championship runs. The Massachusetts-born defensive end said he wasn’t quite ready to put his program on the same level as the legendary Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers series from the 1980s.
He said he understood why some fans might be getting tired of seeing the same two teams fight for championships every year, but he’s not sure if their two-pronged dominance is a good thing or a bad thing for college football.
“I don’t know,” Wilkins said. “How do you feel about the Cavs-Warriors every year? People have mixed feeling about it. If you see the same two teams people might say, ‘I’m not watching it,’ but they’re watching it anyway. I personally don’t know.”
Wilkins said the Alabama teams they’ve seen in each year have been different, but they’ll be preparing the same way for a matchup that is becoming a part of the program’s regular routine.