Brian Kelly was very mad about Alabama playing football during a football game

Alabama blitzing LSU when the game’s already over is exactly what football is all about. And Brian Kelly complaining about it is everything that’s wrong with football nowadays. 

The Crimson Tide are in the thick of a College Football Playoff push. So of course they’re not going to take it easy on any team from here on out — and they certainly aren’t taking it easy on a rival. When two teams that hate each other are pitted against each other with as much on the line as there was on Saturday, why would you expect anything different than a team rubbing it in after they just curb-stomped you?

And yet, there Kelly was at the end of his team's 42-13 drubbing at the hands of Alabama, more concerned about what the Tide was up to than about how to prevent his team from getting dog-walked by SEC rivals in the future. You couldn't come up with a tidier example of the gap between the Tigers and the nation's elite, and i=it's exactly why LSU is probably going to be left out of the CFP when all is said and done. 

Brian Kelly was very mad about Alabama playing football during a football game

I’ve always believed that if you don’t want a team to run the score up, stop them. Though it’s not quite the same, the ideology is similar here: If a team decides they want to blitz you into oblivion, you better be ready to pick it up. Instead, Kelly decided to whine both to the officials and to the media on Saturday night.

I don’t fault Alabama at all for not letting up in this spot. Especially when the CFP committee uses the ever-ambiguous "eye test" as among the most important criteria in determining which teams get seeded over others. With two losses and not much of a path to the conference title game, the Tide have work to do to shore up their spot in the 12-team field. So Kalen DeBoer's crew wanted no doubt left that stomping the Tigers in Death Valley wasn’t just eliminating one team from the playoff but also boosting their own CFP profile with a resounding win. 

If I’m not mistaken, LSU scored a garbage time touchdown. Alabama wasn't complaining that you didn’t just run the clock out and take your whipping, were they? No. So, why should they back off defensive pressure just because they dragged you up and down the field all game?

This is what football is all about. The best teams put on a dominant display from start to finish. If DeBoer allows his team to let off now and quit while they’re ahead, that’s setting a precedent that it’s OK to do that every time — and we've already seen problems with complacency come back to haunt the Tide this seaosn.

So next time, instead of complaining about a team doing exactly what they’re supposed to do in playing until the game is over, focus more on not getting embarrassed on national television.