TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- So who is college football's second-best team after Georgia upset turnover-plagued Florida 17-9 on Saturday?

Is it No. 3 Kansas State, which walloped No. 14 Texas Tech 55-24 to improve to 8-0?

Is it No. 4 Oregon, which scored eight touchdowns in the first half of a 70-14 rout of lowly Colorado?

Or is it No. 5 Notre Dame, which announced its return to national relevance once and for all with a 30-13 victory at No. 8 Oklahoma?

After watching No. 1 Alabama dismantle No. 11 Mississippi State 38-7 in front of a sellout crowd of 101,821 fans at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night, I can offer you an educated guess.

The argument over No. 2 doesn't even matter.

None of the above mentioned teams is good enough on both offense and defense to beat the Crimson Tide, the defending BCS national champions.

This Alabama team, which improved to 8-0 going into next week's SEC West showdown at No. 6 LSU, might be as good as (or even better than) the 2011 squad that finished 12-1 and defeated the Tigers 21-0 in the Allstate BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans.

AJ McCarron and Alabama are playing at a level nobody else can match. AP Photo/Dave Martin

I'm not telling the BCS to hand a fourth crystal trophy to Alabama coach Nick Saban (he won his first at LSU in 2003 and then two more with the Tide in 2009 and 2011) sometime next week. But unless the Tide lose quarterback AJ McCarron to a season-ending injury or turn it over six times in a game like Florida did on Saturday, they're going to be one of the teams playing in the Jan. 7 Discover BCS National Championship Game in Miami.

And chances are it really won't matter which team plays the Tide, because it's probably not going to win.

Alabama is so good at what it does right now that its games have become rather mundane and anticlimactic. All week long, Mississippi State fans covered the South (and beyond) with the school-endorsed Twitter hash tag #WeBelieve, which was their way of convincing themselves that the undefeated Bulldogs actually had a chance to compete with the Crimson Tide.

Their hopes lasted all of about 12 minutes. Alabama took the game's opening kickoff and marched 59 yards for a touchdown. After blocking a Mississippi State field goal, the Tide scored again on McCarron's 57-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Bell for a 14-0 lead with 3:27 to go in the first quarter.

From there, Alabama's defense pinned its ears back and smothered the Bulldogs. It's gotten to the point where Alabama just sucks the life out of its opponents. Even when Mississippi State was in position to score, the Bulldogs were turned away. Along with the blocked field goal, an interception in the end zone by Alabama safety Robert Lester prevented another score.

"We certainly had a lot of respect for Mississippi State," Saban said. "You can't get to be 7-0 by accident. We thought they were a really good team. You prepare yourself to fight a 15-round fight and know you're going to have to take the fight to them in the early rounds. You know you can't win in the early rounds, but you can certainly lose it."

Alabama has been knocking out its opponents early and often during its national championship defense.

"We knew this was going to be a big game for us," Alabama center Barrett Jones said. "We knew they were going to come out and really believe they could win the game. We knew we'd have to start fast and kind of take their hope away."