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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Nick Saban is the best who has ever done it.
There is no argument to be made against that. None. It is a statement of fact. Any historian who says otherwise is one of those folks who spends their days surrounded by dust-covered books about the single wing, watching black-and-white films on their pocket computers, the ones who so desperately hang on to that overcooked idea that things were always better way back when. Any current observer of college football who pushes back on that point is likely a bitter fan of a team Saban’s squads regularly drubbed, or one the players or coaches who were on the rosters of those teams, denied greatness by greatness.
He’s the best. Period. And now there is a period at the end of his unparalleled career. On Wednesday afternoon, ESPN’s Chris Low broke the news that after 17 seasons as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Saban is hanging up his headset.
Over those 17 seasons, he won a half-dozen national titles, 201 games, and 11 SEC championships during the most competitive era of any conference in the 154-year history of college football. He had a team ranked No. 1 at least once during all but two of those seasons.
Statistics like that make no sense. They don’t look real. The math looks like it cheated, and yet it all adds up to the greatest college football résumé ever written. That point is inarguable.
Bear Bryant, he who built Bama and previously held GOAT status in most minds, also won six national championships in Tuscaloosa, thanks to a willingness — after an admitted initial reluctance — to evolve, modernizing his offensive mind. At Notre Dame, Knute Rockne revolutionized the way a true college football program is constructed and steered. Frank Leahy saved what Rockne had built, revitalizing a struggling program and returning it to its former glory. At Florida State, Bobby Bowden forever changed the way rosters are recruited and assembled. Pop Warner championed safety innovations and managed to balance a hefty ego by continually campaigning to keep football healthy at its grassroots. Woody Hayes had a temper that was only slightly less combustible than a barrelful of gunpowder, but he won big games and planted a coaching tree with more branches than one could possibly keep track of.
Nick Saban did all of the above. Not only that, but he also did it all better. And while he has filled college football with his proteges — Kirby Smart, Steve Sarkisian, Lane Kiffin and Dan Lanning, to name just a few — he has also done all of the above for so long that we have forgotten exactly how long. As good as he has always looked in Crimson, he also looked pretty spiffy in Toledo blue and gold, Michigan State green and white, and LSU purple and gold. His first head coaching job was at Toledo in 1990. In the nearly 30 seasons spent on a sideline since, he posted one losing record.
At LSU and Alabama, it is tempting to slash a historical line between his arrival and everything prior. Let’s call it “Before Saban” and “After Saban” but not use the acronyms. Why? Because anyone who has ever talked with the coach knows there is no BS about him.
Before Saban, LSU hadn’t won a national title since 1958. In 2003, he fixed that. After Saban, the Tigers have added two more.
Before Saban, Bama hadn’t won a national title since 1992 and only one since Bryant’s sixth in 1979. After Saban, it has won six since 2009.
Before Saban, no Tide player had ever won a Heisman Trophy. After Saban, they’ve brought home four stiff-armed awards.
The list goes on and on. But perhaps the most telling and impactful dividing line is less BS/AS and more OS/NS, as in “Old Saban” and “New Saban.” Football-wise, that’s about his Bryant-like willingness to change his offensive philosophy. As the game increasingly sped up and spread out, he openly campaigned for rules that would keep offensive football slower and closer to his longtime pro-set, run-first beliefs. When he realized that was a losing battle, he not only embraced up-tempo offenses, he accelerated their development. He hired west coasters like Kiffin and Sarkisian. Against all odds, Alabama became the new Wide Receiver U.
But anyone who has spent even the tiniest amount of time around the coach in recent seasons knows his personal evolution has outpaced his on-field one. There has been a noticeable change in demeanor. The intensity has never wavered, but he has learned to pick his explosive spots. During a conversation in the days leading up to what turned out to be his final game as Alabama’s head coach, the 2024 Rose Bowl, he became emotional when talking about how this team and its collective personality had kept him laughing all season, even when that team looked lost just three weeks into the season. He credits his last national title team – the 2020 squad that was forced into a close-quarters bubble due to the Covid-19 pandemic – for teaching him to appreciate what was around him more, while keeping his legendary hyperfocus toward maintaining the Crimson Tide empire.
“People tell me that I smile more now. I don’t know if that is true or not. I do know that I pause to enjoy things more now than I did before. Perhaps that’s just getting older, aight? But I like to think that it’s growth. Personal growth. Proof that we never stopped growing, even when you are an old West Virginia guy with stiff joints and grandkids and dealing with a hundred teenagers every day.”
Saban chuckled.
“Here’s the deal. I love what I do, aight? I always have and always will. But yes, maybe I do appreciate it more. One day I will look back and miss it. But I don’t think that will be anytime soon. I’m too busy right now.”
That was on Dec. 15. Anytime soon, it turns out, was less than a month later. But his impact certainly won’t subside anytime soon. Because that line, the one between “Before Saban” and “After Saban” has never applied to just Alabama, or LSU, or even the SEC. As of Jan. 10, 2024, that designation of eras applies to the entirety of college football.
Aight?