This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Dec. 26 / Jan. 2 Issue. Subscribe today!

AN HOUR BEFORE the sidelines at the SEC championship game are lined with Southern football dignitaries. All available previous MVPs of SEC title games are here, along with current coaches of teams that didn't make the game and a pair of television news desks, one from ESPN, the other from CBS.

Retiring play-by-play man Verne Lundquist greets a receiving line of well-wishers at the CBS desk, all while sidestepping Alabama's warm-up drills. The defending national champ is preparing for a game it will win 54-16 over Florida to remain undefeated and formalize its invitation to the College Football Playoff.

"These dudes are so big it's a little scary," says former Gators QB Danny Wuerffel, extending his hand after waiting in line.

"No," Uncle Verne replies. "What's scary is that most of them are still teenagers."

Anyone who bought the 2016 college football preview magazines last summer will remember the questions. How will Alabama replace Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry? How will the Crimson Tide account for losing quarterback Jake Coker, a 23-year-old transfer from Florida State with five years' experience? How will they replace 11 starters? (Those questions were posed in ESPN The Magazine's preview by the same scribe you are reading right now.)

Alabama entered the season with the SEC's least experienced roster. Ohio State did the same in the Big Ten. Ditto for Clemson: bottom of the ACC. But it was actually much starker than that. Phil Steele, the king of preseason mags, uses a five-part formula to determine experience, and he ranked the Tide roster 116th out of 128 FBS teams. Clemson was ranked 101st. Ohio State was dead last at 128th.

Jalen Hurts may only be a freshman, but he's a perfect fit for Alabama. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

So if you're scoring at home -- and recruits are -- then three of this year's best four teams were also among its youngest, somehow surviving one of the most unpredictable regular seasons in recent memory. The holdout is Washington. The Pac-12 champ ranked fourth in its conference and 43rd overall in experience, with only four returning senior starters but a whopping 80 percent of the roster having already played enough to earn a varsity letter.

"It really does go against what I guess you'd call conventional coaching wisdom," says Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, who returned two senior starters from his 2015 team that went 12-1 and finished the year ranked fourth in the AP poll. This year the team is 11-1 and will play Clemson in the CFP semifinals. "But I would also say, OK, who are those two seniors and who are your juniors? I like those juniors I have in the middle of my defense. And I really like that junior I have under center leading my offense in J.T. Barrett."

They say the same at Clemson about their quarterback, Deshaun Watson. Along with his fellow juniors -- running back Wayne Gallman and wide receiver Mike Williams -- he's had to carry a roster heavy on underclassmen to a much higher degree of difficulty than a year ago, when Clemson pushed Alabama in the title game.

"I know it's a cliché to talk about having another coach out on the field, but that's what Deshaun is," says Clemson's actual coach, Dabo Swinney. "In the end, we can only run so many drills, watch so much film and install so many plays. When those young guys are out there and it's time to actually run those plays, then it's Deshaun who is looking them in the eyes. Freshmen or not, they are going to do what they have to do to not let him down."

That pressure of not wanting to become the weak link in the chain is indeed a great motivator. A kid who spent the past few seasons watching Watson lead Clemson to a stack of prime-time wins doesn't want to be the one who causes that pipeline to rupture.

And that brings us back to Alabama.

"My single biggest fear every day was that I did not want to be the guy who caused the winning to stop," Henry says. Standing along that same Georgia Dome sideline watching his former Tide teammates, he is straight-faced serious. He recalls his freshman year in 2013, joining the team as it came off consecutive BCS national championships and its third in four years. One year removed from high school, he carried the football just 36 times. Upperclassmen incessantly reminded him of his responsibilities.

So did his phone. "It was blowing up all the time with texts and calls from former Alabama players," Henry says. "'You better listen to the coaches, you better keep this going, you better stick with the Process.' I didn't even know these guys. But now I do the same thing. I'll be doing it here tonight."

Ah yes, the Process. When Nick Saban used to drop his trademark mantra, it was greeted by those outside Tuscaloosa -- and some inside the city limits -- with eye rolls and bingo calls of "Drink!" Such attitudes have since vanished, pounded into the ground by the win-loss record that has also buried Bama's SEC rivals. In the early days, when he'd visit the living rooms of recruits, Saban would preach the program's relentless attention to every detail as a way to shed light on his grandiose plans. But now that those plans have come to historic fruition, that speech has changed. Either you're on board with the Process or you aren't. Not on board? Enjoy your time playing elsewhere. If you are, we'll need your ring size.

"There is a way we do things at Alabama and they aren't easy, but we aren't looking for players who are looking for easy," Saban explained in February on national signing day after inking a class ranked second best in the nation by ESPN.com. "I think what we've been able to accomplish here makes it easy for kids to identify what we are about. If they think they can fit into that, and we think they can fit into that, then I think the potential benefits are fairly evident."

That's code for "Why yes, at Alabama we love five-star athletes. But only the ones who can hack it."

The crown jewel in that 2016 recruiting class was a quarterback from the Houston area named Jalen Hurts, the son of a high school football coach. Hurts' size and strength were off the charts, as were his football IQ and his academic record. Per Saban's freshman policies, the 18-year-old doesn't talk to reporters. An early enrollee, he already played the role of Watson as his new team practiced to play Clemson in the title game last January. Now he has a chance to lead his team to a victory in this year's version of that same game and become the first true freshman QB to win a national title since Oklahoma's Jamelle Holieway in 1985.

Deshaun Watson sets an example for young teammates to follow. Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports

"People say, 'Well, how can you win with a freshman quarterback?'" says Alabama radio color commentator Phil Savage, a former NFL general manager who deals with college football's best players annually as executive director of the Senior Bowl. "But they aren't doing it with just any old freshman quarterback. Jalen Hurts is special. He fits. And Alabama is fortunate enough to be in a position where they don't just sign five-star recruits. They sign the ones that fit."

That fortunate position Bama's in is the top, where the view is nice and the shopping list nicer. Over the past four years, Bama has inked classes ranked first, first, first and second. Ohio State has never dropped below seventh, while Clemson has spent the past two years in the top eight. Only heavyweights like them can afford not to play the waiting game with their prospects. Because while beggars can't be choosers, choosers rarely have to be beggars.

Sure, college coaches will tell you that today's high school recruits arrive more football-ready than ever before, thanks to prep programs that have become more aggressive with both their playbooks and their training programs. But experience still matters for nearly all the rest of college football. Washington, which has hovered from 19th to 45th in recruiting, needs its players to stick around. Colorado went worst to first in the Pac-12 South with its experience-heavy roster (ninth in the nation), and Michigan State did the complete opposite in the Big Ten as it hit the bottom of its cycle as an annual fifth-year-player factory. According to Steele, the Spartans were ranked 117th in the nation in experience and 13th in the Big Ten. They finished 3-9.

"The goal is to create an environment of winning," Saban explains in what sounds like total coachspeak but is in fact, well, fact. "Seniors and alums expect a certain level of success, and in turn, they teach the kids who have just arrived to expect that level of success. Only a certain type of young man can handle that. And if you can handle that, then it doesn't matter how old you are."

But it does matter where you play.