Minus Nick Saban, Alabama is about to kick off an arms race

Head coach Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide gestures to fans following the College Football Playoff National Championship game win over the Ohio State Buckeyes at Hard Rock Stadium on Jan. 11, 2021, in Miami Gardens, Fla. Desperation brought Nick Saban to Alabama. Hobbled by NCAA sanctions and a tattered reputation, the Crimson Tide blew through four head coaches in the late 1990s and early ’00s — including a brief stint with former Wazzu head coach that ended before it had even begun.

The Tide hadn’t won a national title since 1992, and had been reduced to hoping that the likes of Mike Shula would revive a moribund program that had fallen well behind the Floridas and Oklahomas of the world. No one wanted the Bama job. Not Steve Spurrier. Not even Rich Rodriguez. In 2006, the Alabama football program was a dead end.

And so, now deceased athletic director Mal Moore, nearly out of options and out of a job, embarked on a clandestine, to get floundering Dolphins coach Nick Saban to abandon his post and come to Tuscaloosa. Saban, already a college national title winner from his time at LSU, was not only Moore’s best chance to revive Alabama, but his ONLY one.

Only Saban had the pedigree to turn Bama around, and he was perhaps the only coach who had the desire to. Because luckily for Moore, Saban hated working in the NFL, hated working FOR him and Saban’s contractor just happened to be Moore’s nephew. Small world. So Moore courted Saban in bits and pieces, and then got enough money together to convince Saban to flee Miami .

The rest is history. But it’s worth taking another look at that history, because it’s about to repeat itself. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Saban turned Alabama into the undisputed powerhouse of college football, and reshaped the entire sport in his image while doing so. Reared by the , Saban professionalized Bama on a level that college football had never before seen.

He created an efficient pipeline from the school directly to the NFL. He won titles without viable quarterbacks and then turned, almost on a dime, to minting out first round draft choices at the position. He took in disgraced coaches from elsewhere, put them in charge of his offense and watched them spring back to competence.

He won six titles as college football changed underneath him: While he was in Tuscaloosa, the NCAA adopted a playoff system, legal , eight figure contracts for coaches (Saban’s final salary with Bama was north of $11 million a year) and approximately 58 different conference realignments that will end with his conference, the SEC, joining with the Big Ten .

Head Coach Nick Saban of Alabama watches practice before taking on Western Carolina on Sept. 1, 2007, at Bryant Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala. So Saban leaves college football, right as it begins to look more and more like the NFL. Every other major program is now constructed using the Bama model, with one of them — Georgia — arguably perfecting it.

This is an obscenely rich sport right now, and it only stands to get richer once , which doubles the rights value to the College Football Playoff, kicks in a few years from now. Alabama powerbrokers won’t have to rely on mere thoughts and prayers to keep their program relevant during this head coach search.

Right after Saban retired, the Tide were immediately linked to current Oregon head coach Dan Lanning. And while Lanning announced Thursday morning that he’s , the Tide will just zero in on another huge name, and they’ll have more than enough money to lure him in. Once that happens, chaos will follow.

One school will steal someone else’s coach, and that school will steal another school’s coach, and on and on until Deion Sanders is somehow the head coach at USC. A dozen Mal Moores will send out a dozen private jets to court a dozen Jim Harbaughs, and every coach involved in this Tilt A Whirl will get a contract that makes Jimbo Fisher’s severance package from A&M look like gas money.

Any school that can’t pony up for their own Saban will be left out on the curb. The consolidation that left the Pac 12 extinct will only accelerate from here. Advertisement Article continues below this ad How you feel about all of this likely depends on how attached you are to the old ways of college football.

Maybe you yearn for the pre Saban era of college football, when Butthole State and Butthole Tech would meet at the end of every season with a spot in the Banana Bowl on the line. Maybe you don’t like that this sport is now exactly as ruthless, and as corporate, as Saban himself. Or maybe you’re like me, and you believe that Saban is a whose football team played some of the most wildly entertaining games I’ve ever seen.

Maybe you believe that college football was always destined to become more like the NFL, and that Saban was the right man, at the right school, at the right time to make that transition a reality. And unlike Belichick, whose coaching tree is an invasive species at this point, Saban’s coaching model has already proved replicable elsewhere.

So not only was this man the greatest coach in the history of college football, but he’s also about to prove to be the most influential. That influence will be counted in tens of millions of dollars, in dozens of brand name coaches landing fat new deals and in remodeled practice facilities that include a full working roller coaster.

This is the sport, the INDUSTRY, that Nick Saban has created. It may be heartless, and it may leave your alma mater dead in a ditch, but it’ll never be boring. — — — —.