Nick Saban's Top 10 Alabama Accomplishments
TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— In a stunning twist, longtime Alabama football coach Nick Saban is calling it a career.
The seven-time national champion's plans were revealed to the world Wednesday, sending unmitigated shockwaves through the sports landscape. Saban's decorated career culminated in a final act for the ages: a 12-2, 2023 season that brought the Crimson Tide its 30th conference championship and some of the most memorable moments in program history.
Saban, whose career at Alabama began with the 2007 season after his splash hiring by the late Mal Moore, has as grandiose a resume as any coach in the history of college sports. He's widely considered the greatest college football coach ever. Here are 10 of his greatest accomplishments since taking the reins in Tuscaloosa.
No. 10: The First SEC Championship Triumph
Saban's third Crimson Tide team entered the 2009 season as a major player in the national scene after starting 12-0 during the preceding year. Unfortunately, that team had run into the buzzsaw of then-reigning Heisman winner Tim Tebow and Florida. The following season, it would come down to a rematch between the two, with Alabama boasting its own Heisman winner in Mark Ingram, to decide which team advanced to the national championship game.
The Crimson Tide won 32-13 and crushed Tebow's dreams of capping off his legendary career with a national title, setting the stage for Saban to compete for the second national championship crown of his coaching career and bring Alabama its first national title in almost two decades.
No. 9: The Final SEC Championship Triumph
In what turned out to be the final on-field accolade (and victory) of Saban's run as the Alabama coach, the Crimson Tide made a major statement by knocking off twice-defending national champion Georgia in the 2023 SEC Championship Game.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Alabama is undefeated, played host to the 27-24 upset that snapped a 29-game winning streak for the Bulldogs and in turn propelled the Crimson Tide to an unlikely ascension into the final College Football Playoff spot. Some have pondered whether this past season was the best coaching job of Saban's career, regardless of the ensuing overtime loss on New Year's Day, as night fell on another memorable edition of the Rose Bowl Game. The conference title cemented everything the 2023 team had come back from, including uncertainty at quarterback, struggles on the offensive line and more.
No. 8: The 2012 National Championship
Speaking of Saban teams that had to overcome adversity, the 2012 squad's stacked roster proved to be no match for Texas A&M Heisman hero Johnny Manziel in mid-November 2012. Suddenly, a team that had been ranked in the top two for the entire campaign needed help, but once it got that help, nothing stopped the national title run. Saban guided the team to a heart-pounding SEC Championship win over Georgia in a game that came down to the final play. The Crimson Tide came out of the blocks fast and later blew out Brian Kelly and top-ranked Notre Dame in Miami to win the third national championship in Saban's time at Alabama. The game was never close, despite the Irish's unbeaten record and Heisman finalist Manti Te'o anchoring a fearsome defensive unit. Kelly faced Saban again but didn't beat him until the 2022 season.
No. 7: The Heisman Four and the NFL First-Round 44
Before Saban, there had never been a Heisman Trophy winner to come out of Alabama. That changed drastically starting with Ingram's narrow 2009 Heisman victory, wherein he was neck-and-neck with Stanford tailback Toby Gerhart for college football's top individual honor. This was followed by Derrick Henry bringing the hardware home in 2015, also beating out a Stanford player in Christian McCaffrey. Tua Tagovailoa was close in 2018, then DeVonta Smith etched his name in the growing-rarer group of wide receivers to win the Heisman in 2020. Bryce Young was the choice in 2021, becoming the first-ever Crimson Tide quarterback with the award on his ledger. In 17 seasons at Alabama, Saban coached an astonishing four Heisman Trophy winners. Alongside those talents, Saban and company churned out 44 Alabama players who went in the first round of the NFL Draft. That's before factoring in the multiple newly minted prospects from the 2023-24 team who are projected to hear their names called in the draft's opening round.
No. 6: The 2015 National Championship
One of the more underrated games in recent college football history is the national title game for the 2015-16 season, which pitted unbeaten Clemson and Dabo Swinney against Saban and a one-loss Alabama team that had just dismantled Michigan State 38-0 in the Cotton Bowl. Clemson was new blood back then, suddenly rising up to take the mantle of the ACC's top postseason stalwart that it would go on to hold for a number of years. Led by Henry and Jake Coker, a huge return from Kenyan Drake and an unexpected breakout from O.J. Howard, the Crimson Tide won its first national title of the College Football Playoff era. Thus began an era where not only did Alabama make more Playoff appearances than any program, but it also played in more title games than anybody else.
No. 5: The Tennessee Streak
While national championships are the pinnacle of the sport, a rarely challenged, 15-year run of dominance over a rival is nothing to sneeze at. For the first 15 years of Saban's Alabama tenure, the Crimson Tide beat the Tennessee Volunteers. A major rival for whom large swaths of fans still hold considerable disdain, the Volunteers were rarely even competitive in the matchup for the lion's share of the Saban era. Saban changed the entire perception of the Third Saturday in October, such that a whole generation of fans grew up never seeing a team their parents and grandparents hated having anything to offer for Alabama. In 17 tries against Tennessee, Saban won 16, with the 2023 revenge victory serving as a watershed moment where the Crimson Tide was able to truly rise up and put its stamp on a game.
No. 4: The 2017 National Championship
The first act of Nick Saban vs. Kirby Smart was one for the ages. Smart was at the time two years removed from being the Crimson Tide defensive coordinator and had a chance to bring Georgia back to the promised land, etching the program's name amongst national champions for the first time in almost four decades. It seemed poised to happen, too, until Saban made arguably the most iconic of his legendary halftime adjustments: he sent in freshman backup Tagovailoa in struggling Jalen Hurts' stead. What followed, a fierce comeback and 26-23 overtime victory that is among the most chaotic endings in the history of college sports, is history. Saban ultimately got the better of Smart in a series that was ignited by that January night in Atlanta.
No. 3: The 2009 National Championship
While the groundwork for a return to glory had already been laid by the time Alabama took to Pasadena in a bid for the program's first national title since the 1992 season, it was crucial to punctuate that with a title win. 25 wins since the start of the 2008 season was a heck of a metric, but those 25 paled in comparison to the one that Saban's 2009 team came together and used to usher in what became an incredible dynasty. Texas was riding high in its own right but fell 37-21 after an untimely injury to veteran signal caller Colt McCoy. Alabama capitalized in all phases, paving the way for Saban to raise the BCS' trademark crystal ball and utter the words that are still heard over the Bryant-Denny Stadium loudspeakers on every home game day: "This is not the end. This is the beginning."
No. 2: The 2011 National Championship
In the wake of tragedy, the Alabama community rallied behind the Crimson Tide football team. After a tornado devastated Tuscaloosa in April 2011, Saban and his players delivered a championship to the city and to Crimson Tide faithful nine months later. At the end of a season full of emotion, Alabama overcame mighty LSU by putting on one of the most dominant performances in a national title game. The Tigers' victory in Tuscaloosa in the much-hyped regular season meeting did not carry over into the postseason finale in New Orleans, where one of the better defenses in college football memory kept LSU from even crossing midfield until the fourth quarter and held the team off the board entirely. It was Saban's second title in three years, which he earned by triumphing over his former team, with whom he won a national championship in the 2003-04 season.
No. 1: The 2020 National Championship
The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down in early 2020, with far-reaching and global ramifications. It was no sure thing that college football would even be played that fall, and once things were finally set, Alabama was faced with a 10-game SEC schedule. Undeterred, Saban and the Crimson Tide ran the table, bringing home a Heisman, an SEC title and a definitive performance in the lone Rose Bowl Game to be held outside Pasadena since World War II. Faced with Ohio State in the title game of an unprecedented season, Alabama won Saban's seventh and final career national title by a score of 52-24. It was the coach's sixth national championship with the Crimson Tide. Winning 11 SEC games while staring down a global pandemic is no small feat. To maintain that consistency in the postseason is also tremendously impressive. Once every last piece of confetti had fallen in Miami, the new decade was set to begin in much the same way as the previous one had, with Alabama on top of the mountain.
So ends an era that no one could've foreseen when Moore took a chance on luring Saban away from the Miami Dolphins to replace Mike Shula. The Saban dynasty in Tuscaloosa, with 206 wins, nine conference titles and six national championships, is among the greatest runs in the history of sports. He is generally regarded as the greatest coach in the history of the college game. After 17 remarkable seasons, he's decided it's time to step away, thus closing the book on a timeframe that will never truly end in the hearts of Alabama fans all over the world.
