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Bo Scarbrough was an important part of Alabama’s offense for several years. The former Tide running back witnessed a lot of the back-and-forth with Clemson since Dabo Swinney brought the Tigers to national prominence.
Scarbrough has been on the winning side of things, but he’s also been on the losing side.
Alabama beat Clemson in the first national championship matchup back in 2016, but Deshaun Watson and the rest of the Tigers got some payback the following season in 2017. These two teams, once again, met in the College Football Playoff in 2018, but it was in the semifinals.
Scarbrough sat down with Aaron Murray as part of the Campus Lore Championship Moments series presented by Amway and XS Energy Drink to discuss Alabama’s mentality prior to playing Clemson for the third year in a row after losing.
“We didn’t really look at it as a revenge game. It wasn’t a revenge game for us. That was a statement. We were trying to make a statement when we stepped out on that field because we had embarrassed ourselves the year before against them.
The year after that, we wanted to make it a statement. Once we stepped on that field, Clemson was not going to beat us. We were going to play our hearts out.”
Scarbrough then went on to talk about what Nick Saban had to say about the game, including to not play the game off emotions. It wasn’t about revenge, it was about making a statement — like the Alabama running back had mentioned.
It’s a fantastic clip that really gives great insight into the approach for Saban and his teams during these so-called “revenge games.” I would highly recommend watching it in it’s entirety, which can be found in the video above.
Scarbrough finished his career at Alabama with 1,800 total yards (1,512 rushing, 288 receiving) and 20 rushing touchdowns. He was then a late round pick in the NFL, where he has bounced around with teams such as the Seattle Seahawks, Jacksonville Jaguars and Detroit Lions.
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