Last Monday night, Alabama defeated LSU to win the BCS National Championship.
Coming in as the underdogs – albeit not major underdogs – the Crimson Tide did something that has never been done in the history of the national championship game: they shut out their opponent.
And with his team’s 21-0 trouncing of LSU, head coach Nick Saban firmly placed himself in the discussion as the greatest college football coach ever.
I’m not saying that he is unquestionably the greatest because that isn’t the case. He may not even be the greatest coach in Alabama history – Paul “Bear” Bryant and his six national titles say hello – at least not yet.
One thing I do not believe can be questioned, however, is that he is the best coach of the modern era.
The aforementioned Bryant may have won six national championships, twice as many as Saban currently has, but he was also a head coach for 38 seasons, over twice as many as Saban’s 16 years at the helm of Toledo, Michigan State, LSU, and Alabama, respectively (with a two-year stint as the head man of the Miami Dolphins thrown in between his time at the latter two universities).
With 141 wins against 54 losses and one tie (which equates to a 72.2% winning percentage) as well as the distinct honor of being the only coach to win three BCS titles, Saban is clearly at the top of his craft.
And while he had success at Toledo, leading the Rockets to a 9-2 record in 1990, along with five consecutive seasons of .500 or better ball at Michigan State, Saban’s real success came when he took the head coaching job at LSU in 2000. After a combined record of 26-12 in his first three seasons with the Tigers, Saban led them to a 13-1 record and a national championship in 2003, defeating the Oklahoma Sooners 21-14 in the Sugar Bowl.
Following a 9-3 record at LSU in 2004, Saban tried his hand at the NFL, coaching the Miami Dolphins for two seasons. However, after a 15-17 mark, he returned to the college game in 2007, becoming Alabama’s head coach.
In 2009, Saban led the Crimson Tide to the only undefeated season of his career, as they finished 14-0, capped off by a 37-21 triumph over the Texas Longhorns in the BCS National Championship Game.
Add to that last Monday’s romp of the previously top-ranked Tigers and I think you’ll agree that Saban has reached the pinnacle of his profession – although I see him sticking around for several years to come, possibly even surpassing Bryant for the most national championships of all-time.
Two things that are for certain, though, are that he’ll continue to demand the best out of his players, and that when his teams find success, he’ll deflect all of the attention away from himself and onto said players. On Monday, he did both of those things, as he always does. Late in the fourth quarter, when an Alabama player jumped offsides for the team’s first penalty of the entire game, Saban was irate on the sidelines. Meanwhile, after the game, he constantly praised his players when the attention was drawn to him.
That, to me, is the biggest thing that separates Saban from the rest: he always wins with honor, class, and humility.
The people of Tuscaloosa have been through a lot over the past year. Last April, a deadly tornado swept through the town.
Last Monday night, LSU faced a natural disaster of its own: Hurricane Saban.
Sources: ESPN.com and cfbdatawarehouse.com