This first appeared in Kevin Scarbinsky’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every Thursday, $5/month or $50/year.

Are you like me? Are you still stunned at what happened Monday in the Rose Bowl? Still plagued by questions the final score couldn’t answer? Still wondering if we witnessed more than one sunset in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains?

What happened on the field was shocking enough. Second-half Alabama showed up to seize the day, only to give way to September Alabama. Michigan bowed up on the final play, conjuring memories of a long-ago Sugar Bowl, looking the Tide in the eye as if to say, “You’d better pass.”

It took forever to play the final play in overtime. It will take longer for every nook and cranny of the dynasty to get over it and the finality of Michigan 27, Alabama 20. Fourth and 31 will smile on one crimson shoulder for eternity. Fourth and 3, its evil twin, will sneer from the other in agonizing perpetuity.

What happened next? Well, in Titletown, they might say, the GOAT’s heart grew three sizes that day. Put another way, and put this on the tombstone if this was the dynasty’s very last breath: Alabama couldn’t snap, and Nick Saban didn’t.

He certainly had the motive and the opportunity. As good as he looks and feels, he is now 72 years old and 17 seasons deep into his takeover of Alabama, the SEC and college football. He still owns the record of seven national championships as a head coach without peer, but only one of those has come in the last six years.