GEORGIA TAKES ON SABAN-LED ALABAMA
ATLANTA» Nick Saban’s greatest rival, his most persistent foe, is human nature. So far, Saban is winning that matchup.
Alabama’s coach has the Crimson Tide back in the College Football Playoff national championship game for the third straight season. Alabama has won four national titles since Saban took over in 2007, and played for another. Only once since 2008 has Alabama lost more than a single regular-season game.
Alabama has been the sport’s equivalent to the NFL’s Patriots during Saban’s time — fitting because he once worked for New England coach Bill Belichick, the winner of a record five Super Bowls.
Add a BCS championship Saban won while the coach at LSU, and his five poll-era national championships leave him one short of a record held by the man who coached Alabama’s first dynasty, Paul “Bear” Bryant. Saban can match the Bear on Monday night when No. 4 Alabama faces No. 3 Georgia in the CFP title game. President Donald Trump is expected to attend.
Relentlessly driven and motivated by competition for competition’s sake, Saban has engineered a complacency-proof program in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Whether it’s lunchtime basketball with assistant coaches or what has become Alabama’s annual appearance in the national title game, the 66-year-old Saban knows one approach.
“Well, I think that I’m always looking for the next challenge,” he said Sunday. “I don’t know if it’s the way I was raised or whatever, that you’re kind of only as good as your last play, as your last game. I think everyone has heard me talk about the fact that success is not a continuum, it’s momentary, and it’s human nature to get satisfied and get complacent when you have success.
“But in a competitive business like we’re in where there’s always a next challenge, there’s always a next game, there’s always a better team to play, if you have that mind-set, you’re not going to play with any consistency. If you can’t play with consistency in performance, you’re not going to have success long term.”
Saban’s next challenge is from a former protégé.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart spent nine seasons with Saban at Alabama, the last eight as defensive coordinator, before taking over as coach at his alma mater in 2016. The two shared the stage Sunday with the tall, gold championship trophy for a final news conference before Monday night’s big game. Smart was part of those basketball games for years, usually on Saban’s team because, as Saban said, they both hated to lose.
Smart, 42, has taken Saban’s “process” to Athens, Ga., a title-hungry town that hasn’t celebrated a Bulldogs national championship since Herschel Walker was a freshman in 1980. Asked what the most important lesson he learned from Saban, Smart had a prepared response.
“Well, this is not the first time I’ve answered this question this week, so I’ll be happy to answer it again,” Smart said. “Probably the single greatest thing is the level of commitment to the organization, holding everybody in the organization to a standard that he embraced himself. He never asked anybody in the organization to work any harder than he did. He held every person on the staff — and I’m not talking about just the coaching staff, I’m talking about the entire organization, to be at their best.”
With Smart in Year 2 at Georgia, it’s too soon to say this game represents a potential paradigm shift in the SEC. But a few weeks removed from the Bulldogs signing the top recruiting class in the country, there are signs this is just the beginning of a high-stakes rivalry between mentor and mentee. In 11 games, Saban’s never lost to a head coach who once worked for him.
A downside — if there is one — to living under the “Saban Standard” is anything less than the best can seem like the worst. A second straight title game loss after last season’s thriller against Clemson would mean “just” one national title for Saban and Alabama in the past five seasons.
“That’s a career for most coaches, but for him it’s an abject failure,” Alabama and national radio show host Paul Finebaum said.