Goodbye to the GOAT

• Ryan McGee, ESPN Elder WriterJan 10, 2024, 08:00 PM ET Close Senior author for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com

• 2-time Sports Emmy winner
• 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year

Nick Saban is the best who has ever done it.There is no argument to be made against that. None. It is a declaration of reality. Any historian who states otherwise is among those folks who invests their days surrounded by dust-covered books about the single wing, enjoying black-and-white movies on their pocket computer systems, the ones who so frantically hang on to that overcooked concept that things were constantly better way back when. Any present observer of college football who presses back on that point is likely a bitter fan of a team Saban’s squads regularly drubbed, or one the players or coaches who were on the lineups of those teams, rejected success by greatness.He’s the very best. Duration. And now there is a period at the end of his unparalleled career. On Wednesday afternoon, ESPN’s Chris Low broke the news that after 17 seasons as the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Saban is hanging up his headset.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated Over those 17 seasons, he won a half-dozen national titles, 201 games, and 11 SEC championships throughout the most competitive age of any

conference in the 154-year history of college football. He had a group ranked No. 1 a minimum of as soon as during all however two of those seasons.Statistics like that make no sense. They don’t look real. The math appears like it cheated, and yet everything amounts to the greatest college football résumé ever composed. That point is inarguable.Bear Bryant, he who developed Bama and previously held GOAT status in most minds, likewise won 6 national championships in Tuscaloosa, thanks to a determination– after a confessed preliminary hesitation– to evolve, improving his offending mind. At Notre Dame, Knute Rockne changed the way a real college football program is built and guided. Frank Leahy conserved what Rockne had built, rejuvenating a having a hard time program and returning it to its previous magnificence. At Florida State, Bobby Bowden permanently changed the way rosters are hired and assembled. Pop Warner championed security innovations and handled to stabilize a substantial ego by constantly campaigning to keep football healthy at its grassroots. Woody Hayes had a mood that was only slightly less combustible than a barrelful of gunpowder, but he won huge games and planted a coaching tree with more branches than one could perhaps keep track of.Nick Saban did all of the above. Not just that, however he likewise did it all much better. And while he has filled college football with his proteges– Kirby Smart, Steve Sarkisian, Lane Kiffin and Dan Lanning, to call simply a few– he has likewise done all of the above for so long that we have actually forgotten exactly for how long. As great as he has actually constantly looked in Crimson, he likewise looked quite spiffy in Toledo blue and gold, Michigan State green and white, and LSU purple and gold. His very first head coaching task was at Toledo in 1990. In the nearly 30 seasons invested in a sideline because, he never had a losing season.At LSU and Alabama, it is appealing to slash a historic line between his arrival and whatever prior. Let’s call it” Before Saban “and “After Saban”but not utilize the acronyms. Why? Due to the fact that anyone who has actually ever talked with the coach understands there is no BS about him. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images Before Saban, LSU had not won a national title given that 1958. In 2003, he fixed that. After Saban, the Tigers have added two more.Before Saban, Bama hadn’t won a nationwide title given that 1992 and just one because Bryant’s 6th in 1979. After Saban, it has actually won six.Before Saban, no Tide player had actually ever won a Heisman Trophy. After Saban, they’ve brought home 4 stiff-armed awards.The list continues. However perhaps the most telling and impactful dividing line is less BS/AS and more OS/NS, as in “Old Saban

“and”New Saban.”Football-wise, that has to do with his Bryant-like determination to change his offensive viewpoint. As the game significantly accelerated

and spread out, he freely campaigned for guidelines that would keep offensive football slower and closer to his long time pro-set, run-first beliefs. When he understood that was a losing battle, he not just welcomed up-tempo offenses, he accelerated their development. He worked with West Coasters like Kiffin and Sarkisian. Versus all chances, Alabama ended up being the brand-new Wide Receiver U.But anybody who has invested even the smallest amount of time around the coach in current seasons knows his personal development has actually outpaced his on-field one. There has actually been a visible modification in disposition. The strength has actually never ever wavered, but he has discovered to select his explosive areas. Throughout a conversation in the days leading up to what turned out to be his last game as Alabama’s head coach, the 2024 Rose Bowl, he ended up being psychological when speaking about how this group and its collective personality had kept him chuckling all season, even when that group looked lost just 3 weeks into the season. He credits his last national title group– the 2020 team that was forced into a close-quarters bubble due to the Covid-19 pandemic– for teaching him to value what was around him more, while keeping his legendary hyperfocus toward preserving the Crimson Tide empire.”People inform me that I smile more now. I do not understand if that is true or not. I do understand that I pause to take pleasure in things more now than I did in the past. Possibly that’s simply growing older, aight? However I like to believe that it’s development. Personal growth. Proof that we never ever stopped growing, even when you are an old West Virginia guy with stiff joints and grandkids and handling a hundred teenagers every day.”Saban chuckled.”Here’s the offer. I like what I do, aight? I always have and constantly will. But yes, possibly I do value it more. One day I will recall and miss it. But I don’t think that will be anytime quickly. I’m too hectic today. “That was on Dec. 15. Anytime soon, it ends up, was less than a month later. But his impact certainly will not go away anytime soon. Since that line, the one between”Before Saban “and “After Saban” has never applied to just Alabama, or LSU, or perhaps the SEC. As of Jan. 10, 2024, that classification of eras applies to the totality of college football.Aight?