In a nationwide era of disillusionment, institutional failure and turmoil, Alabama football was, of all things, a machine of astonishing consistency that delivered excellence for nearly two decades.
Through hard work and discipline, Nick Saban, who took over as head football coach at the University of Alabama in 2007, has achieved a string of accomplishments that Alabama fans will clamor for at the slightest suggestion: a record seven national championships – six including at Alabama after one at Louisiana State University – a record 15 consecutive seasons in which the team was ranked No. 1 at some point, a record 44 Alabama players selected in the first round of the NFL Draft.
Saban's resignation, announced Wednesday, comes after a season that some have called one of the best coaching jobs of his career. Even Bill Belichick, the similarly dour New England Patriots coach and mentor to Saban who parted ways with his team on Thursday after 24 years, appeared to be stepping down about a year too late.
Saban was at one point the highest-paid public servant in the country, a powerful example of our national priorities, especially in a state as poor as Alabama. But his successes in this field helped change people's attitudes towards the state and the university.
In the late 1990s, when football was an afterthought in Alabama, it was usually for no good reason when the state was in the news, recalled Chris England, now a state representative who represents part of Tuscaloosa. When he told his classmates at Howard University in Washington, D.C. that he was from Alabama, they responded, “Wow, what's it like to live there?”
That's not the case anymore.
“A few years ago I was in Turkey and I was standing in the middle of a hotel lobby wearing an Alabama shirt and people started chanting 'Roll Tide!' to scream,” England remembers. “It changed the reaction.”
The timing for this was fortunate. In the years that Saban was in Tuscaloosa, the state experienced a long series of national embarrassments: sprawling corruption scandals, the resignation of a governor brought about by leaked recordings of his shameful dirty talk, and the entire circus surrounding Roy Moore's candidacy for the presidency USA in 2017 Senate. (Saban received 426 write-in votes in that election.)
Seeing Alabama in a national headline often brought a frisson of fear, like watching a drunken relative stand up for a wedding toast.
But you could also just turn the sports pages. Here, alongside photos of Saban pacing the sidelines with dyspeptic determination, Alabama was an epitome of discipline and performance.
This had been the case decades earlier, when Paul “Bear” Bryant was the Alabama coach and seemingly set an impossible standard at the time. But Saban not only matched — and exceeded — Bryant's accomplishments, he also brought with him a philosophical worldview that became as much a part of the program's identity as his success on the field.
Saban embraced what he called “the process,” insisting that players focus solely on what was asked of them on each play, rather than what was on the scoreboard. He preached a restless perfectionism and a deep allergy to praise, which he called “rat poison.”
It went from being in keeping with the direction of college football and the broader culture to becoming even more evolved. With his constant grimace and reluctance to discuss anything beyond game plans and player development, Saban was almost the opposite of camera-ready. But how much we loved watching.
Reluctantly but with incredible success, Saban adapted to the changing pace of college football and ended up recruiting some of the sport's most dynamic quarterbacks. But true Saban fans knew him as the epitome of what was often called “joyless murderball” — a steady, unexciting but unstoppable conquest.
That's not the way politics is typically done in Alabama, where the approach is usually heavy on defiance rather than the details. Consider Saban's former domestic enemy Tommy Tuberville, the former coach at Auburn University who is now a Republican U.S. senator and is best known for his conspicuous blocking of hundreds of military promotions.
Saban was never described as flashy. He had a job, focused on it relentlessly, and was far more successful at it than Alabama fans could ever have imagined. He's done it so consistently and for so long, said England, the state lawmaker, that fans coming of age in Alabama have no other experience to compare it to.
“All he knows is that we're the best, and always have been,” England said of his own 14-year-old son, who nervously awaits what lies ahead. “He never knew what it was like to be terrible.”