Amidst Changing Landscape, Nick Saban's Task of Rebuilding Alabama More Difficult Than Ever

Following the Crimson Tide's success in 2020 amidst the pandemic, Saban now faces even more daunting obstacles with the growth of the NCAA Transfer Portal and the implementation of NIL legislation.

HOOVER, Ala. — When the 2020 college football season came to a close, Alabama and head coach Nick Saban finished at the very top once again.

While being on top of the college football mountain is something that the Crimson Tide has become quite accustomed to as the team heads into Saban's 15th season as coach, that success is accompanied by a downside:

With success comes rebuilding.

On Wednesday, Saban took to the stage at the 2021 SEC Football Kickoff Media Days. An event that was canceled altogether in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual meeting between SEC coaches and the media is one of the only chances outside of the A-Day Game to ask Saban in-depth questions as the team prepares for the upcoming season.

Since the Saban dynasty at Alabama following the 2009 BCS title victory over Texas, the Crimson Tide's mantra has been 'At Alabama, they don't rebuild. They reload.' This year, however, Saban's opening statement highlighted that a byproduct of last year's success is, in fact, having to rebuild.

"The penalty for success when you win a national championship is you won because you had a whole lot of good players," Saban said. "They were well coached, so you had a lot of good coaches. When you lose some of those players, and we lost six first-round draft picks and ten guys overall in the draft, and you lose some of those coaches to better opportunities, the challenge is you've got to rebuild with a lot of new players who will be younger, have new roles, less experience, and how do they respond to these new roles?

"That's why rebuilding is a tremendous challenge. That's why it's very difficult to repeat."

Saban has been responsible for six titles with the Crimson Tide but has only been able to repeat on one occasion: 2011 and 2012. While the team has been able to have a 'gap year' on three occasions between 2009 and 2012, 2012 and 2014 as well as 2015 and 2017, a repeat has only happened once.

In college football, it is incredibly difficult for a team to repeat as national champions. In all of Crimson Tide history, the program has only been able to accomplish it three times: the aforementioned 2011 and 2012 along with 1964/1965 and 1978/1979.

With 10 players departing the team to head to the NFL — six of those in the first round — Saban has a huge challenge on his hands in rebuilding his team. Throw in the NCAA Transfer Portal and new name, image and likeness policies dramatically shaping the landscape of the game, and Saban's job has grown more difficult than ever.

As per usual, though, Saban is ahead of the curve. This past offseason, the Crimson Tide obtained two highly-touted players from Power 5 programs in wide receiver Jameson Williams from Ohio State and linebacker Henry To'oTo'o from Tennessee. In anticipation of the changing NIL policies, Alabama Athletics launched The Advantage, a program established to help athletes build personal brands and provide financial education while assisting them in acquiring NIL deals.

Saban noted on Wednesday that while the changes are unprecedented, they are also opportunities.

"As for all the changes that we have in college football, I know there's a lot of interest in a lot of those things," Saban said. "I almost feel that anything that I say will probably be wrong because there's no precedent for the consequences that some of the things that we are creating, whether they're good opportunities, even if they're good opportunities, there's no precedent for the consequences that some of these things are going to create, whether they're good or bad."

There is still a long way to go before the full impact of the change to the NIL landscape is fully realized. If the precedent set by the arrival of the transfer portal is anything to go by — and it seems like it's a fairly solid predictor at this point — then college football is about to go through another dramatic series of changes over the next couple of years.

Saban is well aware of how quickly the face of college football is about to change, for better or worse.

"But a year from now, whatever comments that we make probably will be a lot more effective than the ones we make now because we don't have precedent and we don't have experience for how this is going to affect the future of college football and college football players," Saban said. "So we want to focus on what we need to do to adapt on a day-to-day basis and try to help our players manage through these opportunities and circumstances the best that we can."

Rebuilding teams following success has always been difficult in college athletics, but with the changes implemented over the last couple of years, the task has grown more difficult than ever.

That being said, Saban still believes that the best way to return the team to the College Football Playoff in 2021 is to embrace the changes of the sport and continue to put in the hard work.

"I've been pleased so far with the way our players have embraced their new roles and new responsibilities, how the new faces on our team have worked hard to develop in a way that they can have enough consistency in performance to have success and develop the confidence they need to be able to have success," Saban said. "We're going to be a work in progress as we focus on improvement, and that's going to be critical to our success."