Nick Saban wasn’t just college football’s GOAT; he was its cash cow | Commentary

The most transformational season in college football just became more metamorphic.

Already, 2024 was going to be a game-changing season with the advent of a 12-team playoff, the SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma, the Big Ten adding USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon, and the Pac-12 going extinct.

And now this:

Alabama’s Nick Saban — the maestro, the master, the greatest coach in college football history — is retiring.

And now comes the greatest coaching search in college football history; a search in which anybody and everybody with any gravitas is a candidate. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, an Alabama alum, is the obvious candidate. FSU’s Mike Norvell is a candidate. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian is a candidate.

Saban is such an organized, micromanaging control freak, he’s probably already orchestrated a succession plan that has yet to be revealed. The $10-million-dollar-a-year question is this: Why would any successful coach want to follow Saban at Alabama, where the only direction you can go is down?

Why would anybody want to replace the greatest coach in the history of the sport?

Actually, why would anybody want to replace the greatest coach in the history of any sport?

Greater than Bear Bryant. Greater than John Wooden. Greater than Bill Belichick. Greater than Phil Jackson. Greater than Geno Auriemma.

Admittedly, I’ve changed my stance over the years. There was a time when I thought Bobby Bowden was the greatest coach in college football history because  — unlike Saban, Bryant and Joe Paterno — Bobby built a dynastic program from scratch at Florida State. But then Saban kept winning national championship after national championship, and his greatness — correction, his GOATness — became impossible to deny.

In his 28 years as a college head coach, he won a record seven national titles (one more than the Bear) along with 12 conference titles and never had a losing season. And he did it while navigating the toughest conference in college football in an era where staying on top is harder than it’s ever been.

Just look at Nebraska or Texas or USC or Miami or Florida or Florida State or many other programs that have risen and fallen during Saban’s 17 years at Alabama. Other programs have come and gone over the years, but Saban’s Cyborgs just kept coming.

That’s why I say he’s the greatest coach in sports history. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: It is so much harder today to win national championships in college football and basketball than it was in the heydays of Bryant and Wooden.

Back in the Bear’s day, there were no scholarship limitations or transfer portal and Bryant  could pile up 130-man rosters filled with four- and five-star recruits. And there weren’t 50 or 60 schools who were dedicating the resources to compete for national championships. Hell, schools like UCF weren’t even in existence — let alone cashing $40 million a year TV checks and investing it back into their program in the mad dash to make the College Football Playoff.

“There are many more good programs now than there were in Bear Bryant’s day,” former Colorado, Washington and UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel, now an analyst for CBS Sports, told me a few years ago. “Bear Bryant coached in a time when you could win a national title before you even played in a bowl game. In terms of what Saban has done coaching in the most competitive era in history, he has no peer.”

Until the recent rise of Georgia, Saban dominated the SEC and, as a result, he dominated college football. At different junctures, he won four of seven national championships and five of nine. He pretty much ran national championship-winning coaches like Les Miles and Urban Meyer out of the league. Saban beat Meyer so badly in the SEC Championship Game in 2009 that Meyer quit a few weeks later, and the Gators haven’t been the same since.

Even so, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU and every other SEC program all owe Saban a mega-million-dollar debt of gratitude. Those annual $70-80 million TV checks that every school in the SEC is cashing can be indirectly attributed to Saban.

If you ask me, he is the reason the SEC Network even exists. In an era when college football TV deals began going through the roof, Saban almost singlehandedly elevated the SEC into the most dominant, dynastic conference in college football.

“I couldn’t even begin to estimate the amount of money Nick Saban has generated,” Cecil Hurt, the late columnist of the Tuscaloosa News, told me a few years ago. “He has dominated and defined the whole playoff era of college football. For anybody who is sitting down and negotiating those television-rights deals, they’re getting the money they’re getting from television because of Nick Saban more than anyone else.”

Even ESPN’s Paul Finebaum, the face of the SEC Network and a broadcaster I consider the most influential voice in college football, told me once that he owes his career to Saban. Finebaum was doing local sports-talk radio in Birmingham when Saban took over at Alabama. Within a year, Finebaum’s ratings quadrupled and within another year he had signed a lucrative national deal with Sirius XM. He’s now making millions with ESPN/SEC Network.

“Nick Saban’s salary is like paying $24 for Manhattan Island,” Finebaum told me once. “He’s the biggest bargain in college football history. He makes $9 or $10 million, but if he was on Wall Street as CEO of Goldman Sachs he’d be making $50 or $60 million. He’s actually underpaid.”

In other words, he wasn’t just college football’s GOAT; he was its cow — its cash cow..

And now he’s gone.

His coaching greatness won’t just be measured in the number of national championships he won, it’ll be measured in his organizational skills, his attention to detail and a “process” that adapted to these transformational times in college football.

The transfer portal.

NIL.

A 12-team playoff..

The game is changing; conferences are expanding; players are evolving.

We will sorely miss the unwavering consistency and reliability of Nick Saban’s dominance.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen