Georgia uses Nick Saban's own formula to beat Alabama football and change college football | Deas

INDIANAPOLIS — That wasn't just a College Football Playoff championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium on Monday.

Alabama vs. Georgia was a referendum on the direction of the sport.

No, not about expanding the playoff or limiting the transfer portal or regulating players getting paid through name, image and likeness deals. Those troubling topics will be handled by administrators behind closed doors.

This was in the open, for all to see.

This was a showdown between Nick Saban 2009 football (manifested in this case by the Bulldogs) vs. new-age Nick Saban football (Crimson Tide).

The winner: Old-school, hard-nosed, defensive football. Save the icing; no need for any on this cake. Georgia's 33-18 victory makes the case that you don't have to have a fancy offense to win it all.

Georgia came into the national championship game with a team that had been dominant throughout the entire regular season, built in the mold of the Saban's early Alabama championship teams: brick-hard, widebody defenders and a physical offense. No mystery: Georgia coach Kirby Smart learned it that way as a longtime assistant under Saban in Tuscaloosa.

Alabama has transformed its identity, starting when Saban brought in Lane Kiffin to run the offense in 2014. Rather than pound opponents into dust with an attack that came to be known as joyless murderball, it developed an explosive, quick-strike offense that spreads the defense around the field.

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Likewise, the defense became less stout but faster, with more versatile athletes in the trenches and linebackers who run like deer. Instead of being constructed to stop hard-nosed offenses like the LSU teams of the earlier 2010s, the Crimson Tide is now built to slow spread passing and read-option attacks.

Saban not so many years ago asked, with the advent of run-pass options and spread offenses, if this is what we want football to be. And then he went with the trend and did it as well or better than anyone else.

So what this year has really been about is whether Smart could beat the master with Saban's own old model, or whether Alabama's coach is simply one step ahead of his former pupil because of how he has evolved the makeup of his roster.

The first chapter, an SEC Championship Game meeting in early December, went decidedly in Alabama's favor. The quick-strike, big-play offense directed by former NFL head coach Bill O'Brien overwhelmed Georgia for a 41-24 Alabama victory.

That would seem to have settled it: Alabama's cutting-edge attack made Georgia's caveman approach looked dated. Murderball suffered a death by a thousand cuts.

Only the Bulldogs didn't die. While the Crimson Tide ascended to the top seed in the playoff, Georgia also made the four-team field. Alabama put away Cincinnati in a workmanlike fashion and the Bulldogs thumped Michigan in the other semifinal.

Then came the rematch: winner take all for the big trophy.

Alabama came in handicapped by the loss of one of its top receivers, John Metchie III, who went down with a knee injury in that SEC Championship Game, and was further hindered when its top deep threat, Jameson Williams, sustained his own injury in the second quarter.

That took away two of the Crimson Tide's best playmakers, but it still had the Heisman Trophy winner in Bryce Young playing quarterback. And its best running back, Brian Robinson Jr., was healthy for the rematch after playing hobbled in the first showdown.

This one played out Georgia's away. The teams traded field goals in the first half: Alabama's defense did its job, and so did Georgia's. The Crimson Tide's lone touchdown came after a controversial play that saw Stetson Bennett lose control of the ball trying to throw it away, and Alabama's Brian Branch come up with what was ruled a fumble recovery.

Georgia then drove to answer that touchdown and, after getting a stop, bullied Alabama's defense to add to its lead. That suffocating defense capped the Bulldogs' victory with an interception return for a touchdown.

What does it mean? It means defense still wins championships, or at least that defense-oriented teams can do so. 

You can call it a draw, with Alabama winning the first round and Georgia winning the second. You can say it would have been different if the Crimson Tide still had its top weapons in Williams and Metchie.

But the fact is, college football today looks different than it was starting to look the last few years, when prolific offenses at Clemson and LSU and Alabama simply overwhelmed defenses and made them look obsolete.

Smart and Georgia showed this year that there is another way – ironically using a formula perfected at Alabama by Saban.

Tommy Deas is Alabama sports editor for the USA TODAY Network and leader of the SEC coverage cross-team. Follow him on Twitter @tommydeas.