Thank you, although I take pride in both my cogent posts and my posts that are not cogent.
Don't be fooled, Saban is all ego and is about manipulating the rules in his favor.
His ego couldn't handle that in the NFL the QB matters the most, and matters more than the coach, so rather than prove his greatness he went back to the college level where he knew he could shape circumstances to his favor. For an individual that had nothing more to prove at the college level and had an opportunity to cement himself as the greatest football coach ever, he turned coward and ran.
He absolutely was successful at the college level. But his success wasn't due to coaching innovation. He figured out how to recruit better than most, and was able to build a brand of Alabama and SEC superiority that he unjustly benefited from. The rules were different, and the college game still suffers from that today. Alabama could be excused a loss when nobody else was given that privilege.
The most criminal instance of this was back in 2012, in the BCS era, when LSU beat Alabama at Bama's home field in the regular season, knocking them out of the SEC conference championship game. But they were given more respect than LSU, the consensus number one, that beat them at home and also played and won the SEC conference championship game, by being given a rematch shot they never deserved. Why was it the right call for it to be more important to give Alabama another chance than it was to not respect that LSU had already proven they could beat a contender ON THE ROAD?
Saban also fought against actual coaching innovation and engaged in bogus endeavors to change the rules when hurry up offenses proved to be successful at giving offenses a chance to overcome talented defenses. This continued his pattern of trying to cut off advantages created by his opponents.
And, yes, he was getting up in years, but he bolted from the college game right as things were getting real with the NIL/portal era. It follows a pattern - when the playing field starts to look even a little more equal, Saban gets out of there.
So, yes, incredible track record, won an absurd amount of games and championships. But one of Saban's talents, and arguably his most considerable one, was getting himself into situations where he could succeed. He ran away from everything else.
In conclusion, I'll see Nick Saban in Hell.
