Max
Member
In an era when college football programs have never enjoyed more exposure (or been more exposed), Nick Sabanās four-title run as Alabama coach seems all the more remarkable.
The distance from Eugene to Tuscaloosa is roughly 2,585 miles, give or take a league. For the better part of six years, these two nondescript campus towns have been considered hotbeds of college football. For different reasons, mind you, but focal points nonetheless.
Eugene houses the University of Oregon, the transcendent, engine-that-could school that (with ample help from Nike) has clawed its way from years of mediocrity to become a consistent top-10 football program. Never dull, never able to scale the final wall, the Ducks have been fun, if frustratingly on the fringe of greatness.
With the rise in talent came a belief that Oregon was in a different classification that it actually was. With that belief came cries for respect, and with those cries the heady chants of āWe want āBama!ā All Oregon wanted was a shot at the proverbial giant; the slayer of men; the maniacal, unrelenting machine that is the Crimson Tide.
As a longtime card-carrying citizen of Duck Nation, I no longer want āBama. Instead, I simply want to acknowledge what most already know, but few are willing to admit: Nick Saban, leader of said leviathan, is the greatest college football coach of all time.
No sport, outside of Major League Baseball, bows down to the history of the game like college football. Traditions are rooted in days gone by. Coaches are statued and adored long after their passing. Despite the ever-changing landscapes, standards are set, and nothing can change them.
It takes a generational giant to topple the ghosts of Alabama, Penn State, or Oklahoma past. As long as we have record books, men like Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, and Bud Wilkerson will be the barrier over which all new coaches must climb. And they must do it in an age where college football has never been more competitive. Where every school gets both exposure and exposed; where one slip can crumble an entire program; where one bad season can halt any momentum.
Thatās what makes Nick Sabanās seven-year run in Tuscaloosa so unflinchingly amazing.
When Saban joined the Crimson Tide in 2007, he was taking over a program so stooped in its own history, so blood-thirsty in its desire to be great again, that any perspectiveāāāand thatās hard to find in Alabama, anywaysāāāhad been lost. Almost 30 years after his last steps on the Tide sideline, Bear Bryantstill had a stranglehold on the state. No one was good enough, and no amount of SEC titles, victories over Auburn, or 10-win seasons could turn the collective views of the fan base.
The root of all evil in college sportsāāāhistoryāāāwas destined to implode a once-proud entity. Instead, it was history that changed.
Sabanās four national titles in seven years is so mindblowing, so astonishingly ridiculous, that instead of appreciating it, the nation vilifies. Because Nick Saban is, from the outside looking in, a grumpy, dissatisfied scrooge. Because heās the villainous leader of a football-obsessed, money-driven corporation which will do whatever it can to stockpile championships and claim supremacy over all that try to topple it.
And you know what? Thatās exactly what he is. And Iāve come to respect the hell out of him for it.
What makes Saban so greatāāāand what draws the most ire from non-Alabama fansāāāis that he seems to do it all with the emotions of a mid-level drone rolling out of bed on a Monday morning. Heās so ho-hum in victory, so indifferent, that he simply cannot relate to the common fan.
After last nightās win, where most coaches would be beaming from ear-to-ear, Saban was stoic:
āWe didnāt always play pretty in this game. It probably wasnāt one of our best games when it just comes to flat execution. But when it comes to competing and making plays when we needed to make them, it was probably as good as it gets.ā
Perhaps this is why heās able to rattle off championships and stockpile NFL talent: Thereās no room for reminiscing. Take one day off, someone will be there to rip you off your pedestal. Even at a place as dominant as Alabama, with the world at his fingertips, Saban knows that one bad season could cause it all to come tumbling down.
He knows college football is a monopoly. He also seems to be the only one willing to embrace that fact. In this mightiest of American legacy sports, itās win or go home. And Saban isnāt ready to do that just yet.
Iāve stopped giving into the delusion that collegiate sports is at all about the students. That it gives a damn about anything other than bottom lines in the black and checks in the win column. The NCAA is a bullet-train business, and only a few have fully jumped on. Sabanās Alabama is one of them.
The rest of the nation is pretending that thereās more to it; that thereās still a purity to the game. There isnāt. Itās over.
Monday night, in a beautifully played championship game, we saw the separation between Alabama and the rest of the country. This wasnāt the best Crimson Tide team Sabanās ever had, but what makes his current run so special is that even his āBā squad will bludgeon you, outsmart and out-size and out-speed you. And just when you think you have something, anything, the script is suddenly flipped. Because the one trait that all Saban teams haveāāāand this can no longer be disputedāāāis that ability to look upon the sideline and know theyāre being helped by the greatest skipper ever to do it.
We Surrender, Nick ā The Cauldron
The distance from Eugene to Tuscaloosa is roughly 2,585 miles, give or take a league. For the better part of six years, these two nondescript campus towns have been considered hotbeds of college football. For different reasons, mind you, but focal points nonetheless.
Eugene houses the University of Oregon, the transcendent, engine-that-could school that (with ample help from Nike) has clawed its way from years of mediocrity to become a consistent top-10 football program. Never dull, never able to scale the final wall, the Ducks have been fun, if frustratingly on the fringe of greatness.
With the rise in talent came a belief that Oregon was in a different classification that it actually was. With that belief came cries for respect, and with those cries the heady chants of āWe want āBama!ā All Oregon wanted was a shot at the proverbial giant; the slayer of men; the maniacal, unrelenting machine that is the Crimson Tide.
As a longtime card-carrying citizen of Duck Nation, I no longer want āBama. Instead, I simply want to acknowledge what most already know, but few are willing to admit: Nick Saban, leader of said leviathan, is the greatest college football coach of all time.
No sport, outside of Major League Baseball, bows down to the history of the game like college football. Traditions are rooted in days gone by. Coaches are statued and adored long after their passing. Despite the ever-changing landscapes, standards are set, and nothing can change them.
It takes a generational giant to topple the ghosts of Alabama, Penn State, or Oklahoma past. As long as we have record books, men like Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, and Bud Wilkerson will be the barrier over which all new coaches must climb. And they must do it in an age where college football has never been more competitive. Where every school gets both exposure and exposed; where one slip can crumble an entire program; where one bad season can halt any momentum.
Thatās what makes Nick Sabanās seven-year run in Tuscaloosa so unflinchingly amazing.
When Saban joined the Crimson Tide in 2007, he was taking over a program so stooped in its own history, so blood-thirsty in its desire to be great again, that any perspectiveāāāand thatās hard to find in Alabama, anywaysāāāhad been lost. Almost 30 years after his last steps on the Tide sideline, Bear Bryantstill had a stranglehold on the state. No one was good enough, and no amount of SEC titles, victories over Auburn, or 10-win seasons could turn the collective views of the fan base.
The root of all evil in college sportsāāāhistoryāāāwas destined to implode a once-proud entity. Instead, it was history that changed.
Sabanās four national titles in seven years is so mindblowing, so astonishingly ridiculous, that instead of appreciating it, the nation vilifies. Because Nick Saban is, from the outside looking in, a grumpy, dissatisfied scrooge. Because heās the villainous leader of a football-obsessed, money-driven corporation which will do whatever it can to stockpile championships and claim supremacy over all that try to topple it.
And you know what? Thatās exactly what he is. And Iāve come to respect the hell out of him for it.
What makes Saban so greatāāāand what draws the most ire from non-Alabama fansāāāis that he seems to do it all with the emotions of a mid-level drone rolling out of bed on a Monday morning. Heās so ho-hum in victory, so indifferent, that he simply cannot relate to the common fan.
After last nightās win, where most coaches would be beaming from ear-to-ear, Saban was stoic:
āWe didnāt always play pretty in this game. It probably wasnāt one of our best games when it just comes to flat execution. But when it comes to competing and making plays when we needed to make them, it was probably as good as it gets.ā
Perhaps this is why heās able to rattle off championships and stockpile NFL talent: Thereās no room for reminiscing. Take one day off, someone will be there to rip you off your pedestal. Even at a place as dominant as Alabama, with the world at his fingertips, Saban knows that one bad season could cause it all to come tumbling down.
He knows college football is a monopoly. He also seems to be the only one willing to embrace that fact. In this mightiest of American legacy sports, itās win or go home. And Saban isnāt ready to do that just yet.
Iāve stopped giving into the delusion that collegiate sports is at all about the students. That it gives a damn about anything other than bottom lines in the black and checks in the win column. The NCAA is a bullet-train business, and only a few have fully jumped on. Sabanās Alabama is one of them.
The rest of the nation is pretending that thereās more to it; that thereās still a purity to the game. There isnāt. Itās over.
Monday night, in a beautifully played championship game, we saw the separation between Alabama and the rest of the country. This wasnāt the best Crimson Tide team Sabanās ever had, but what makes his current run so special is that even his āBā squad will bludgeon you, outsmart and out-size and out-speed you. And just when you think you have something, anything, the script is suddenly flipped. Because the one trait that all Saban teams haveāāāand this can no longer be disputedāāāis that ability to look upon the sideline and know theyāre being helped by the greatest skipper ever to do it.
We Surrender, Nick ā The Cauldron
