MIAMI GARDENS, Florida – Former Florida coach Steve Spurrier went to speak at a high school clinic in Alabama in 2016, shortly after leaving South Carolina in fall 2015.
Spurrier talked to his old friend and opponent, Nick Saban, and Spurrier made a prediction: “You will train here until you lose three games in a year,” recalled Spurrier laughing in a telephone interview on Monday afternoon.
In the five seasons since Spurrier’s prediction, Saban has lost five games in total. And on Monday night, Saban won his sixth Alabama title and seventh overall national championship, becoming the coach with the most national championships in college football history.
Alabama ran beyond Ohio State, 52-24, to complete a perfect 13-0 season in a game that doubled as a metaphor for Alabama distancing itself from the rest of the sport.
Whether Saban is the greatest of all time or not will always be subjective, a topic of debate that will surely arise when Saban’s seven total championships put him ahead of Paul “Bear” Bryant, who won six in Alabama.
[Get your Alabama CFP national championship gear here]
While the discussion about the greatest coach in the history of the sport may still survive in the rib huts, tee boxes and front porches in and around Tuscaloosa, there are also some lines between the debate that are becoming difficult to ignore – Saban still has a chance to distance yourself from the field.
“I think he still has a lot more,” said Spurrier. He remembered Saban playing with him that “hell would explode” if they lost three games in a year. This does not seem imminent.
“I don’t see him losing three in a year anytime soon,” added Spurrier. “There is no rest. He loves what he is doing and still has more years to do. “
Bryant’s college run from 1945 to 1982 – with a record of 323-85-17 – has long been considered the best in the sport’s history. Saban’s 25 seasons as a college head coach, which started in Toledo in 1990, are certainly the best of his time, with 261-65-1.
You can disagree that Saban is the GOAT, if you want. But you better recognize that it will still graze for a few more years. Anyone who bets against Saban, 69, playing for an eighth title next season or a ninth somewhere in the future is probably the same guy telling you to buy stocks of typewriters, phone books or Avias.
“Your focus and your energy level, you can’t even describe them,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne told Yahoo Sports. “He is so disciplined in continuing the process and not allowing successes to make him hit the pause button.”
He added the essence of Saban: “He doesn’t succumb to success”.
Saban is the head of the biggest college football machine. And maybe in the story of that. And if you believe the popular theory that Alabama, Clemson and the state of Ohio have distanced themselves from the rest of the sport, it is fair to note that this college football tie showed how much Alabama distanced itself from these programs.
Alabama also appears to have risen ahead of the SEC, whose once-vaunted depth has suddenly reached the levels of a roller coaster. LSU is struggling and risking its future by reviving Joe Brady’s schemes – without Joe Burrow. Auburn brought a stranger from Boise to try to take Saban down. Tennessee ran out of dumps to burn. Both schools in Mississippi are more interesting than threatening.
Florida, Georgia and Texas A&M are all formidable, but it’s easy to see that Saban is so afraid of rat poison. There will be heaped portions of it until the foot finds the leather this fall.
“I’m not sure if the story was completely written,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told Yahoo Sports. “There is another chapter.”
Maybe more.
There will certainly be personnel losses, ranging from Smith to offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian to quarterback Mac Jones’ inevitable NFL statement. But considering that Alabama lost the most explosive college football player to injury for most of the season (Jaylen Waddle) and this allowed the Heisman Trophy (Smith) winner to emerge, there is a certain air of inevitability about robust substitutes available.
“Times have changed and recruitment has changed,” Hall of Fame coach Frank Beamer told Yahoo Sports about Saban on Monday. “The way they managed to hold on for so many years, that was impressive. I think about the team’s turnover and how it continues to develop. Some talented coaches have left, and the product is the same next year. “
Sankey highlighted how Saban adjusted and resisted, as this game offered the last salvo in an identity transformation that changed the program from a defensive ethos to attack vertically and overcome opponents. Saban’s team in Alabama became what he always hated to defend and criticized.
As he runs away from the rest of the sport, there is little sign that he is slowing down.
“He has an incredible fire internally in his belly to continue, and I’m not talking about performance on the pitch,” said former Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley. “You look at the sideline and the way he trains and trains. His energy must be incredible, you cannot do what he does without incredible energy. “
And that energy remains as strong as it has always been on the recruiting trail. Nick Saban wakes up tomorrow as seven times national champion and with the country’s first recruiting class.
These alternative GOAT arguments stand a chance of being much quieter in the years to come.
More from Yahoo Sports: