Graphic by University of Alabama Athletics
I can barely remember what college football was like before Nick Saban was hired by Alabama in January 2007.
Tim Tebow was gearing up to destroy Heisman-winner Troy Smith and Ohio State in the BCS National Championship. Boise State had just pulled the statue-and-liberty on Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in one of this century’s most famous games.
Alabama was wrapping up a 6-7 season that concluded in a loss to Oklahoma State in the Independence Bowl.
The Tide were looking for a new head coach to bring them back to national prominence, and their first choice was… Rich Rodriguez?
Yes, Alabama offered its head coaching job to Rich Rod, who was then at West Virginia. Rodriguez turned down the offer before Alabama turned its attention to Saban, who was more than willing to leave the Dolphins after going 15-17 in two seasons, never reaching the playoffs.
Imagine how different college football might look if Rodriguez had accepted the Bama job.
Nonetheless, we don’t have to worry about that reality, because over the next 17 years, Saban built the greatest dynasty college football has ever seen. Six national championships. Nine national championship appearances. 14 BCS/New Year’s Six bowl appearances. A 206-29 overall record (with a little NCAA adjustment, to be fair).
I mean, it felt like a national holiday any time Saban’s Tide lost a game. That’s how dominant he was in Tuscaloosa.
As Alabama looks for its coach of the future and attempts to pick up the pieces, let’s just enjoy some of Saban’s best moments.
Saban arrives in Tuscaloosa
I still remember turning on SportsCenter and seeing Saban get off the plane in Tuscaloosa when he was announced as head coach. I remember thinking fairly Shakespearean at the time: “That’s much ado about nothing!”
Boy, was I wrong.
Alabama’s first Heisman and Saban’s second national championship
Mark Ingram became the first Alabama player to ever win the Heisman after the 2009 season and became a key figure of Saban’s first title team at Alabama.
Alabama went on to dominate Texas in the national championship. By the way, Texas fans – Colt McCoy’s injury would not have had one bit of difference on the result!
At the ensuing parade in Tuscaloosa, Saban famously claimed that he was just getting started. He truly was.
The emotional 2011 season
Tuscaloosa was torn apart by a tornado in April, and Saban was a key part of the community’s recovery efforts, both immediately after the disaster and during the ensuing fall.
In the wake of the tornado, Saban led the 2011 Tide to a national championship. A lot of people, myself included, forget how important that season was to Alabama as a whole, and the lengths it went to mend the broken spirits there.
It could be Saban’s most emotionally charged season.
Dynasty status confirmed
Saban capped off 2012 by destroying Notre Dame in the national championship game. His only loss of the season was the still-famous Johnny Manziel game in Tuscaloosa.
Notre Dame was somewhat of a Cinderella story that year, led by much-fabled linebacker Manti Te’o. Safe to say Saban and co. put the princess to sleep that night.
The championship battles with Clemson
For much of Saban’s tenure, Dabo Swinney and Clemson looked like the surest bets to topple the Alabama empire.
Swinney actually bested Saban in two of their three head-to-head meetings in the CFP title game, letting the college football world know that Alabama was in fact beatable.
To me, the overwhelming 2018 loss to Clemson and then-freshman Trevor Lawrence set the stage for what ended up being the beginning of the end for Saban’s chokehold over the sport.
Still, the Tide dramatically beat Clemson after the 2015 season to claim the second-ever title in the playoff era.
“I’m not going to, so quit asking”
In that 2018 season that ultimately led to the Clemson loss, Saban gave us one of his most meme-able moments:
Saban was juggling whether to start Tua Tagovailoa or Jalen Hurts at quarterback following a dramatic national championship win in which Tua, then a freshman, replaced Hurts at halftime and brought the Tide back from behind to win the title. Saban’s most heated quarterback controversy ensued.
Hurts’s and Tagovailoa’s parallel, ongoing success in the NFL remains one of Saban’s lasting legacies.
The master versus his apprentices
For many years, that Manziel masterclass in 2012 remained the only game in which a former assistant of Saban’s had beaten him head-to-head. Things changed dramatically when Kirby Smart and Georgia came onto the scene.
The Tide staved off the Bulldogs in that aforementioned 2017 national championship thanks to the famous walk-off touchdown from Tua to Devonta Smith.
It wouldn’t take long for Smart to finally get over the mountain, as he went on to best Saban in the SEC and win two national championships in 2021 and 2022. It was official – Saban’s Alabama was no longer the clear dominant force in college football.
Still, Saban got the last laugh, knocking the 2023 Bulldogs out of playoff contention by upsetting them last month in the SEC Championship Game. Even when he was seemingly down, Saban was never completely out. It’s part of what made him so unstoppable.
There were many more incredible moments that didn’t even make my cut. Alabama dominated everyone in the COVID-affected 2020 season, which was the most unstable year we’ve had in modern college athletics. Saban adjusted to all the twists of the modern sport, including the transfer portal and NIL.
He even won a national title at LSU before even getting to Bama.
He topped it all off with maybe his best coaching job yet. Saban took a team without any star skill-position players, a non-throwing quarterback, a young offensive line, and a decent (but not great) defense to the playoff. All while likely knowing it was his final season and letting absolutely nobody know about it.
I want to make one thing clear as I close – I absolutely hated Alabama. I didn’t really have a reason for it, but I knew that team was winning and my team wasn’t, and that made me jealous. As I’m sure so many other fans did, I hated Saban’s Tide because of how good they were. How often they recruited all the best players. How often they looked bad in the regular season just to win a championship in the end.
Simply put, Nick Saban is the best to ever do it. While I may selfishly be happy to see him not roaming the sidelines every Saturday, the sport of college football will have to carry on into the future without it’s greatest champion.
He didn’t die, right? Because that last sentence made it sound like he died. Oops.
———————————————————————–
Follow Nick Hedges on X (@nicktrimshedges) or Instagram (@nicktrimshedges)