TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) -San Jose State sure caught a break.
No. 1 Alabama will be without Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and star defensive end Marcell Dareus for Saturday night’s season opener against the Spartans.
OK, the Ingram news barely wobbled the betting line, leaving the Crimson Tide a mere 37 1/2-point favorite. The defending national champion minus two stars is still awfully formidable, especially for an opponent coming off a two-win season and led by a new coach.
Right?
“I think the message here is we have all kind of agreed as a team that our record last year is pretty irrelevant to what we do this year,” said Tide coach Nick Saban, whose team went 14-0. “It won’t have one thing to do with it. Therefore, I think that San Jose (State’s) record last year will be totally irrelevant to what happens in this game as well.”
This game might be enough of a mismatch that Ingram’s absence is irrelevant, too. He’s out with a knee injury sustained early in the week.
That just puts talented backup Trent Richardson at center stage. Or maybe big, athletic playmaking receiver Julio Jones. Or steady quarterback Greg McElroy, who is 30-0 as a starter going back to high school.
“They have a superstar receiver, they have a winner at quarterback, a veteran (offensive) line,” Spartans safety Duke Ihenacho said. “Any way you look at it, they’re the best. It’s going to be rocky.”
Richardson just has yet to play the lead role as a starter. But he turned in two 100-yard efforts last season, along with some highlight-reel runs as a freshman.
Dareus is harder to replace in the short-term because he doesn’t have an experienced backup. He was declared ineligible for two games on Thursday for accepting improper benefits in paying for two trips to Miami. Alabama is appealing to get him back in time for next week’s game with No. 19 Penn State.
The biggest question mark will be how Alabama’s made-over defense looks, with nine new starters even before the Dareus news. Linebacker Dont’a Hightower is returning from a knee injury that cost him most of last season, seven players are expected to make their debuts.
Sophomore Undra Billingsley is listed as Dareus’ backup, and Damion Square is No. 2 on the opposite side. Beyond safety Mark Barron and Hightower, the likely starting 11 has made a collective three career starts.
Of course, Saban has stockpiled enough talent that those numbers might not overwhelm San Jose State with confidence.
The defensive question won’t necessarily be answered against an offense that managed just 13.8 points and 284 yards per game last season. But Hightower is confident for the long haul.
“I feel like we’ll be just as good, if not even better, than we were last year,” he said.
The Tide has a little more breathing room to prove it after opening the past two seasons against Top 10 opponents in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome. This also marks the debut of a bigger Bryant-Denny Stadium.
It now seats 101,821, making it the fifth-biggest venue in football.
Not exactly great news for the Spartans. They haven’t faced a preseason No. 1 team since opening the 2000 season with a 49-13 loss at Nebraska. The program’s last road win over a ranked team came when San Jose State toppled Mike Singletary and No. 9 Baylor 30-22, 30 years ago.
That’s all ancient history for new coach Mike MacIntyre, a longtime pro and college assistant who was hired to replace Dick Tomey. Some history he might be able to draw on: His father’s Vanderbilt team beating the Tide in Tuscaloosa in 1984. MacIntyre was a freshman.
Of course, back then, Alabama’s stadium seated a mere 59,000.
“I’ve tried to explain to them what the atmosphere is going to be like and what the heat is going to be like,” MacIntyre said of his players. “That’s the main thing that’s going to hit them a little bit.
“There’s 102,000 people heated up singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ at the top of their lungs, so it’s a fun place to play.”
San Jose State does have the advantage of a little mystery with the new coaching staff.
“The adjustments that you have to make from week to week is amazing and this is a tough preparation for our defense in that light, because Nevada-Reno was the No. 1 rushing team in the country and supposedly that is the offense that this team is running,” Saban said. “But we have no evidence of that, so we are preparing for all kinds of stuff and it’s option-type football that we have never really experienced before. That makes it a difficult preparation for us.
“Now whether they have the personnel to do that or will run something totally different, we aren’t sure and have no way of being sure.”
Regardless, the Spartans are hoping to float back to California after a monumental upset.
“How big would it be? It’d be gigantic, ginormous, whatever you want to call it,” MacIntyre said. “It would be great for our whole program. It would be great for everyone. I had a friend of mine tell me if we beat Alabama we won’t need to fly back (on a plane). We’ll fly back ourselves. That’s our plan, to fly back ourselves.”
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