By MIKE HERNDON
OK, so now I guess you can say the dynasty is over.
For years, many blowhard so-called sports analysts have been proclaiming the Alabama dynasty is “dead” pretty much anytime the Crimson Tide lost a game. And for years, they’ve been wrong.
It wasn’t even about being right, if you understand how these things work these days. It was about getting you to tune into their stupid yell-over-each-other “debate” shows and share their hot takes on social media. It was about amplifying their own brand.
After many of those losses, of course, Alabama went on to play for, and often win, national titles. And the blowhards moved on to the next topic. If they’d watched Alabama at all during Nick Saban’s tenure, they’d have known the Crimson Tide would remain a perennial national championship contender until Saban retires.
And now he has.
On Wednesday, Saban announced his retirement after 17 years as the head coach at Alabama. It’s a run that included six national titles, nine national championship appearances and nine SEC championships. Over the course of his career at four different schools, he’s won seven national titles – the most of any college football coach in history — 12 conference championships and 297 games, fifth-most all time.
The case can rightly be made that Saban is the greatest college football coach ever. He has consistently adapted to meet the challenges of a changing game and stay ahead of his competitors. And he did it in an era with scholarship limitations and other rules designed to level the playing field in recruiting – limitations that his predecessors in earlier eras didn’t have to manage.
In the end, some new challenges – NIL and the portal – may have factored into his thinking in deciding to walk away. But I’m going to guess It’s got more to do with the fact that he’s 72 years old, he’s got more money than he’ll ever need and he’s got nothing left to prove.
Chris Low, who broke the news for ESPN before Saban announced it himself later in the day, shared a quote he got from Saban a month ago that seems prescient.
“Fourteen-hour days are a lot harder at 72 than they were at 62 when you want to make sure you’re on top of everything, which is more difficult than ever now as a head coach with everything you have to manage.”
So Alabama and its fans will say so long to the man who turned “process” into a verb, who turned a coke bottle into a celebrity, who popularized the phrase “rat poison,” and who famously bit off the head of many a sportswriter.
I was present in the interview room for a few of those famous verbal explosions. Occasionally they were the result of a dumb question or one that Saban found irrelevant and tiresome. I once heard a writer ask, after a blowout win over a mid-major nonconference opponent, whether he was upset his defense didn’t have any sacks. Asking him to speculate or to look ahead past the next opponent was sure to raise his ire. But often his blow-ups were strategic and not really directed at the sportswriter at all. He was speaking to his team through the media.
Alabama’s rivals will rejoice. At Auburn, they rolled Toomer’s Corner because that’s apparently easier to do than defend against a fourth-and-31 pass.
You can’t blame them, I suppose. Saban has been the Darth Vader of College Football for every program not named Alabama for nearly two decades. They didn’t call it Joyless Murderball for nothing.
It will be an attractive job for someone, even if the prospect of following in Saban’s footsteps isn’t. Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin and maybe Clemson’s Dabo Swinney are strong potential candidates (though Lanning says he’s not leaving Eugene).
What will Saban do now? Go on TV? Sell cars and run dealerships? Head off to the lake to fish? Former Alabama quarterback Jake Coker said on Sports Talk 99.5 in Mobile on Wednesday that he expects his former coach to assume some sort of role overseeing the sport as a whole and helping to guide it through this new era of NIL and the portal.
Or maybe just the college football playoff, perhaps? CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock is retiring, too, after all.
It’s difficult to imagine Saban not staying busy and not playing a role in college football in some way. But for now, Alabama fans can be appreciative of this unprecedented run of success. Everyone else can put down the toilet paper rolls and tip their cap to the greatest to ever do it.
Categories: College football
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