It still feels hard to believe.
So strong has Nick Saban’s decade-long influence been on the college football landscape, but Alabama’s head coaching position is vacant – vacant for the first time since January of 2007.
The main offshore sportsbooks have released their odds for the next head coach at Alabama.
Before we break down what your best bets should be, let’s review the head coaching legend’s career at Alabama.
Nick Saban Is Done
It’s hard to wrap your head around it, but Nick Saban is no longer Alabama’s head coach.
The coaching legend announced his retirement yesterday in the early evening time.
He has won seven national championships in his career, six of which he earned at Alabama since he joined the Crimson Tide in 2007 after his brief stint with the Miami Dolphins.
His last national championship came in 2020. Before then, he had made a habit of winning one every three years at the latest – he won one in 2017, 2015, 2012, 2011, and 2009.
It is now 2024 and Bama has not won a national championship since that Tua Tagovailoa-led comeback win over Georgia.
With the onset of NIL, the college football landscape is different now, and Saban hasn’t been enjoying his usual dominance.
It’s a bit unfair to say that time has passed Saban by, because his is still a premiere football program, but to a small extent that is what has happened.
The fact that Alabama’s history has been relatively lackluster attests to the amazingness of Saban’s Hall-of-Fame-worthy run at Bama.
Despite the lull in championships, nobody can take away from Saban what he has accomplished as Alabama’s head coach.
Nick Saban’s Start at Alabama
Nick Saban was announced as Alabama’s head coach on January 4, 2007.
After his struggle as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, it might seem like hiring Saban was an odd decision.
But Saban had already proven his worth in the college football landscape, which is so different from the NFL landscape, that a coach’s failure in the latter cannot comment on his outlook in the former.
In 2003, he won his first national championship. He was LSU’s head coach.
This is the kind of success that Alabama was hoping for from Saban.
He immediately made progress toward this goal. The start wasn’t incredible, but in 2007 he had the Tide heading in the right direction.
In 2007, Saban’s Tide finished 7-6, earning a spot in the Independence Bowl, which Bama won.
2008 was already a strong step forward: in this year, Alabama earned a spot in the SEC title game for the first time since 1999.
The National Championships Start Coming
2009 was the year in which Saban earned his first national championship at Alabama.
Alabama went undefeated that year, with the last one coming in a decisive 37-21 victory over Texas.
The names that we still know speak to the reputation of Saban’s Tide. So many great running backs have come from Alabama, where they helped establish the reputation of Saban’s football team as a tough and physical unit.
In 2009, the key figure was former running back for the New Orleans Saints, Mark Ingram.
Ingram won the Heisman that year and ran for 116 yards and two touchdowns in the national championship.
In 2011, Ingram entered the NFL, and another tough runner in Trent Richardson would take his place at Bama. This year, Richardson wasn’t as good as Ingram, but Saban was still great.
Richardson was a Heisman finalist and Bama won another national championship, bouncing back from its 2010 season.
The Tide would follow up 2011 with another national championship in 2012.
What is perhaps just as impressive as going back-to-back is the fact that Saban had his team so clearly well prepared not only to play but also to dominate in the national title game.
In 2011, Saban’s Tide dominated LSU 21-0. In 2012, they crushed Notre Dame 42-14.
More National Championships
Saban’s next national championship, number four at Alabama, came in 2015.
Alabama defeated Clemson that year 45-40.
This win put Saban in the record books. Along with fellow Alabama legend Paul Bryant, Saban was the only modern coach to win five national titles.
Number six came in 2017, which was perhaps Saban’s most noteworthy coaching performance. Alabama, in that 2017 title game against Georgia, was down 13-0.
With its offense struggling, Saban made an incredibly tough decision: he replaced quarterback Jalen Hurts with freshman Tua Tagovailoa.
The decision, hard as it must have been to make, was clearly the right one.
It proved to be a difference-making decision, as Tua led Bama to a comeback win with a long touchdown throw in overtime that is the stuff of Crimson Tide lore.
Saban’s final national championship came in 2020, a 28-point win over Ohio State.
Who Will Be Next? The Odds
Needless to say, the stakes are high, and in this case, the vacancy position is a big one. Some of Bama’s fans are even pronouncing already on who they don’t want as the next Crimson Tide’s head coach. Such is the case for the Clemson Tigers’ current Head Coach, Dabo Swinney.
Well that’s one name off the list at Bama 😂 pic.twitter.com/u3UfjYM0LQ
— BetOnline.ag (@betonline_ag) January 11, 2024
Oregon head coach Dan Lanning is favored to be Alabama’s next head coach. Yesterday evening, I saw him at +200 to be the next coach. He is now at -175.
He is reportedly in Tuscaloosa already.
We know that Saban is, characteristically, a thorough and detailed planner. It would surprise nobody to find out that he had hand-picked Lanning in advance.
Lanning Is The Man For The Job
Lanning has history in the SEC – in fact, he was once Saban’s GA – and he was defensive coordinator and outside linebackers coach at Georgia.
Lanning has strengthened his reputation since leaving Georgia in 2021, as he most recently led Oregon to a 12-2 season.
Tough, physical, solid on both sides of the ball, and stocked with talent that attests to his recruiting ability, Lanning’s only two losses came in tight affairs to national championship runner-up Washington. His Ducks crushed Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl 45-6.
NCAAF Pick: Dan Lanning (-175) at BetOnline
