The University of Alabama has played 181 football games since 2009, and in 178 of them, it has been favored.
It has entered eight national titles and seven playoff semifinals, each time as an expected victor. It has contested 13 Iron Bowls, seven SEC championships and seven 1-versus-2 showdowns. It has started 10 different quarterbacks and cycled through dozens of assistant coaches and still, almost invariably, the people whose livelihoods depend on handicapping sports haven’t dared doubt the Crimson Tide, because Nick Saban and legions of future NFLers have transformed Bama into something greater than Goliath, into a dynastic menace whose superiority seemed unimpeachable.