Even though Nick Saban sets a high bar for himself, Alabama is still the best team in the country.
In a guarded moment few years ago, Nick Saban revealed one among his biggest fears. He asked, “Can you picture if one of my Alabama teams ever went 8-4?” For virtually any other coach, this isn’t terrible. Saban thinks it’s fine.
That is not the level he set at Alabama. That’s Gator Bowl-level stuff. In addition to college football. All sports with a team. Yes, right now. Could be forever.
That thought may have scared Saban, but it also drove him—so much so that he ran away before anyone could stamp him with any kind of expiration date. He got out in time to keep his legacy as the best college coach of all time.
Saban, 72, quit on Wednesday after 17 years as head coach of Alabama. There will be little doubt now. He leaves with 292 wins, the 15th most all time, four Heisman Trophy winners and 49 players chosen in the very first round of the NFL Draft. His achievements are close to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-contest hitting streak.
It is unlikely that Saban’s record of seven national championships will ever be broken. He won six at Alabama (tying Paul “Bear” Bryant’s record) and one at LSU.
This is the hardest time in history to win a national championship, so it might as well be written in stone.
Saban cornered the market on titles, yet he did it during the greatest competitive period within college football history. He’s mostly to blame for that. It’s been harder than ever to hire people.
In spite of this, Saban and Alabama have had by far the most top-ranked classes (10) since 2010. In the last 18 seasons, the SEC has captured 13 national titles, with Alabama’s six titles making up almost half of that total. The streak began with Florida.
In the middle of it all is the Fairmont, West Virginia, native who used to play defensive back for Kent State. He rules his sport like no other coach has before him.
Before Bryant won his sixth national title, it had been 22 years. At Alabama, Saban did it over the course of 12 years.
It’s not going to happen. Now that there are 12 teams in the College Football Playoff instead of 10, it will be even harder to win the trophy at the end of the season.
Not long before he would have played in his fourth straight postseason era, Saban quit. He played in the old bowl system, the BCS, the CFP, and the expanded CFP.
Before taking over at Alabama, he coached in eight bowl games and won three conference titles as well as a national title.
He was the second choice! It was December 2006, and Rich Rodriguez took a job in Alabama. After regarding a week, he changed his mind and went back to West Virginia.
The University of Alabama was very important to Terry and me, Saban said in a statement made public by the school.
“We have loved every minute of these 17 years as Alabama’s head coaches and as members of the Tuscaloosa community.”
There’s more to it than how many sports we won or lost. It’s about what we left behind and how we did it. We always strived to do things the right way.
The goal was always to aid players build more value for the future, become the best players they could be, and do better in life while they were in the program. We will always think of Alabama as our home because we did that.
Along the way, the great coach built a huge coaching tree and a place where coaches who were having personal or professional problems could go for help.
Steve Sarkisian, the coach of Texas, may be the most well-known “graduate” of the last group. He led his team towards the CFP this season.