Nick Saban leaves impossibly big shoes to fill, on and off the field
Nick Saban is the greatest college football coach of all time. He’s won seven national championships and 11 SEC titles.
Sixty-two former Alabama players are currently on NFL rosters. His coaching tree is vast - and he’s dominated them all during his epic run through the sport.
And now he’s retiring.
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The idea of replacing Saban, 72, felt both inescapable and improbable at the same time. From Michigan State to his title run at LSU and of course to Alabama, in many ways college football was Saban and Saban was college football.
Recruiting certainly was. Under his watch, the Crimson Tide won 10 team recruiting championships, finished second four other times and never dating back to Saban’s first full class in 2008 has Alabama finished outside the top seven.
All those recruiting wins transferred over to the field as Saban cultivated elite talent, made them exceptional college football players and eventually many of them went to the NFL. His legacy is unmatched and unquestioned.
And now it needs to be duplicated.
Over the last few years, whether Saban wanted to admit it or not, whether Saban realized it or not, there was a feeling that the torch was being passed to Georgia and coach Kirby Smart.
The student was schooling the teacher in many ways and while Saban also got his against the Bulldogs, Georgia had become the elite program in college football. Back-to-back national championships. Pumping out team recruiting titles and NFL stars.
Georgia was becoming like the old Alabama while Saban - and the Crimson Tide - were also clearly going nowhere and that showed in the SEC championship where Alabama took out Georgia’s hopes for a three-peat.
But following a legend - the legend - is never easy. And it won’t be at Alabama. If there’s a statue of the coach outside the stadium, you don’t just hand the keys over to someone else, no matter how capable they are, and expect the program, the culture, everything, to stay the same.
Nebraska hasn’t had an undefeated season since Tom Osborne left in 1997. Maybe Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno held on too long at Florida State and Penn State, respectively, but there was severe hangover by both fan bases after their departures.
After Bear Bryant left Alabama following 1982, the Crimson Tide churned through six coaches before getting to Saban.
The names of who could replace Saban are certainly interesting - but will bring with them ramifications that cannot even be considered this quickly since the legendary coach announced his retirement.
Has Dabo Swinney had enough at Clemson and does he want to return home? Does Swinney grasp the changing landscape of NIL and the transfer portal and want to embrace it enough to keep the Crimson Tide not only among the top programs in the country but right at the top?
Will Alabama pursue Mario Cristobal or is he too involved in the rebuild of his hometown school and alma mater at Miami? Oregon coach Dan Lanning has been a name floated around and it certainly makes all the sense in the world so that’s one to watch. Was there any sort of discussion between Saban and Texas coach Steve Sarkisian along these lines?
Is Florida State's Mike Norvell the right candidate after a complete rebuild in less than five years at Florida State? Washington coach Kalen DeBoer wins more than 90 percent of his games and just took the Huskies to their best two-year run in program history and to the national championship.
There are a lot of qualified candidates out there. Alabama is the primo job. But none of them are Saban. No one is. And Alabama fans have to come to that realization.
Saban is the best to ever do it. He’s done doing it now. Alabama and college football in a post-Saban world felt inevitable and unreal at the same time.