Nick Saban retiring as Alabama football coach
Updated: Jan. 10, 2024, 4:22 p.m.|Published: Jan. 10, 2024, 4:19 p.m.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban waves during a welcome event at Disneyland on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. Alabama is scheduled to play against Michigan on New Year's Day in the Rose Bowl, a semifinal in the College Football Playoff. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)AP
By Michael Casagrande | mcasagrande@al.com
And then it was over.
Nick Saban’s retiring as the University of Alabama football coach, ESPN reported Wednesday afternoon, turning a long inevitability into a stark reality and sending shockwaves throughout the college football world.
It ends arguably the greatest run in college football history where the once famously-nomadic Saban finally planted roots and rebuilt a decaying empire.
By reviving a struggling Crimson Tide program -- winning 80.6% of his games and seven national titles -- Saban placed his name among the all-time greats. That includes Paul “Bear” Bryant, the Alabama coach from six whose national title mark Saban passed in 2020.
Where there’s understandable sadness from Huntsville to Mobile, a collective sigh of relief comes from outside the state border. Since arriving in 2007 from the Miami Dolphins, Saban recalibrated the entire sport. His quick rise -- reaching No. 1 in Year 2 and winning the first national title a year later -- wreaked havoc on rivals and created unrealistic expectations for other rebuilding powerhouses.
Auburn’s been through five coaches in Saban’s tenure. Tennessee’s had six. And LSU, three.
The expectation to land the next Saban became unrealistic practically everywhere and the numbers show why they were chasing this success. Saban’s final tallies include the following:
297 wins.
Four Heisman Trophy winners
Nine SEC championships
Eight playoff appearances in 10 years since its inception.
Six national championships (Seven if you count the one at LSU).
Add it up and Saban’s not just in the same conversation as Bryant, he’s arguably past the legend of another era. His teams maintained a level of consistency unmatched even in Bryant’s prime. After going 7-6 in his first season, Saban teams won no fewer than 10 games for the next 16 years.
After playing in the Independence Bowl in Year 1, Alabama never played in a game below the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1. Only four times after that initial season did Alabama enter the postseason without a shot at winning a national title. And when the Crimson Tide won the 2020 crown, Saban passed Bryant for the most national championships won by a single coach.
To celebrate the totality, one must return to the beginning.
Saban, then the Miami Dolphins coach in late 2006, denied any interest in leaving the NFL for the college game. Multiple fiery news conferences saw Saban smack down reports linking him to the Crimson Tide job. Meanwhile, his agent Jimmy Sexton and Alabama athletics director Mal Moore were working on a contract in early January 2007. Saban eventually relented, met with Moore.
On Jan. 3, 2007, the deal was done. The scene at the Tuscaloosa airport on Jan. 4 was national news as a rabid fanbase descended on the tarmac to greet its savior.
Clips of Saban’s introductory news conference held the next day were played throughout his tenure as he sketched a blueprint of the program they planned to reawaken a sleeping giant.
Still, there was a touch of skepticism surrounding just how long Saban planned to dedicate to this project. At the time, he was viewed as a serial job hopper -- one who spent no more than five years in any position before being lured away for greener pastures.
Was he a lifer or a mercenary?
“A lot of this is about legacy,” Saban told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen in an interview strolling through the Walk of Champions statues. “I’d love to leave a legacy as an outstanding college football coach as all the people we’ve seen coming up this walk has done. This would certainly be something … to win the national championship at LSU and then win national championship at another SEC institution like the University of Alabama, I think would establish a legacy that is pretty unique.”
He certainly followed through on that but questions at his opening news conference persisted.
“Do you know where Lake Burton is?” Saban said in response to a question about his next move. “It’s in north Georgia … that’s where I go in the summertime. That’s where I like it. That’s my next stop. So as long as people around here are committed to trying to win, I’m going to be the coach here. At some point in time, maybe somebody else can do it better. If that time comes, that’s where I’m going. Lake Burton. They don’t have a football team there.”
Saban ultimately followed through on that pledge but there were tense times along the way. That came to a peak in December 2013 after Alabama’s bid for a third straight national title ended in the most horrific way possible, the infamous Kick Six loss in the Iron Bowl. Texas, meanwhile, was sparing no expense after forcing out Mack Brown four years after playing Alabama for the national championship.
There was smoke, rumors and solid reporting linking Saban to a possible move to Austin but he eventually landed on a new contract in Tuscaloosa. He considered it a hard reset, like they were starting over in Year 1 with the Crimson Tide.
Part of that process was modernizing the offense after seeing fresh faces like Gus Malzahn, Hugh Freeze and other purveyors of the hurry-up, no-huddle schemes challenge and then defeat Saban’s traditionally dominant defenses. To fix his offense, Saban stunned the college football world by hiring former USC and Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin. Personality-wise, the polar opposite of Saban, Kiffin spent three seasons retooling the offense with quarterbacks Blake Sims, Jake Coker and Jalen Hurts. Alabama made the playoff all three seasons, winning the 2015 title before falling just short in the championship rematch with Clemson a year later.
Saban’s legacy will also include cultivating coaching staffs that either rehabbed big-name talent or produced it outright. The coaching tree is topped by Kirby Smart, the defensive coordinator from 2008-15 who went on to win two national titles and counting after leaving for his alma mater, Georgia in 2016.
Other former Alabama assistants who went on to big careers include Texas coach Steve Sarkisian and Kiffin now at Ole Miss. Two former assistants became Florida head coaches -- Jim McElwain and Billy Napier while Jeremy Pruitt coached Tennessee, Mario Cristobal led Oregon and Miami. Brian Daboll, offensive coordinator in 2017, went on to be the New York Giants head coach while his successor, Mike Locksley took the Maryland head job.
The production of NFL level talent will also be a tentpole in Saban’s Alabama legacy. A total of 120 of his Crimson Tide players were drafted including 44 first-rounders. No class will be remembered more than 2018 when a record 12 players were selected -- four in the first round.
So much of that success can be traced back to the recruiting trail that Saban famously owned. Beginning with the Class of 2008 stocked with the likes of Julio Jones, Mark Ingram and Dont’a Hightower, Alabama became the most consistently dominant force in the recruiting world. It won more than 10 recruiting titles, depending on the recruiting service surveyed and never fell out of the top 10 in Saban’s tenure.
The 2017 class will also go down in history for including Tua Tagovailoa, DeVonta Smith, Najee Harris, Jerry Jeudy, Mac Jones among others. It was a big part of national titles in 2017 and 2020 before moving onto the NFL.
That 2020 title was memorable for many reasons, not just the fact it was ultimately Saban’s last. Played at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Saban navigated an all SEC schedule in dominant fashion. After a scare of a false positive before playing Georgia early in the season, Saban was diagnosed with the virus the week of the Iron Bowl and had to watch Alabama’s 42-13 win over Auburn from his Tuscaloosa-area home instead of the sideline.
A 52-24 CFP title-game win over Ohio State was a coronation for the most talented offensive team in Saban’s tenure, one led by coordinator Sarkisian who left for the Texas job immediately following the win.
Alabama, in a relative sense, struggled over the next two years in regaining the mental edge that made that 2020 team a personal favorite, Saban later said. Losses at Texas A&M, Tennessee and LSU over the next two seasons were disheartening for those who remembered the dominant teams of the past. There were bright spots like the 2021 SEC championship game where Alabama dominated No. 1 Georgia to make another playoff appearance. That high didn’t last as the Bulldogs got revenge and Smart finally took down his mentor a month later in the CFP championship game in Indianapolis.
Then in 2023, Alabama again upset the top-ranked Bulldogs in the SEC championship to sneak into the final four-team playoff.
All of this was done with the latest round of non-football challenges thrown the sport’s way. The long overdue opening of Name, Image and Likeness rights for athletes in 2021 added a layer of complication for coaches and administrators. Add in the loosening of transfer regulations and coaches were navigating what felt like a suddenly lawless marketplace. Saban had taken a cautious approach to the changes, agreeing with the move to allow players to benefit from their NIL while warning of the unintended consequences it would have in recruiting.
Like in so many other matters, Saban the politician used his voice and platform to push his perspective in hopes of influencing decision makers. This, however, was a tangled web of legal and legislative matters that reached all the way to Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. That’s where Saban and other leaders went in the summer of 2023 to lobby lawmakers in another evolution for the product of the West Virginia coal country.
From a scrapy, championship-winning high school quarterback to an undersized college defensive back at Kent State to the highest levels of coaching, Saban’s story’s taken its share of twists and turns.
From a job hopping, hot headed villain of fanbases across the country to the ultimate savior and empire builder in Tuscaloosa, Saban’s found his legacy.
After 17 years as Alabama’s head football coach, there’s no denying Saban’s place in history.
The most consistently dominant coach of his era, Saban made his case as the greatest college football coach to ever walk the sidelines.
Two hundred and 97 wins. Seven national titles. One dynasty.
And now it’s over.
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