re: Can Saban really beat out Bryant for the GOAT at Alabama

What if Bear Bryant had the BCS/College football format when he was coaching? I think he'd have more than 6 NCs.

Bryant

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SEC (13): 1961, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1971,1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981

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Saban
SEC (4): 2009,2012,2014,2015

The SEC Championships total Saban will never sniff, in Bryant
years it was so much easier maybe two to three
teams you had to with a year. I think it's easier to win the National Championship than to win the SEC Campionship.

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Comparing coaches from different eras is difficult at best. After all, you go back quite a ways and people would laugh their butts off if you considered a lowly pissant team like Alabama to be even worth mentioning in the same breath with powerhouses like Army, Minnesota, and Harvard.

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I get the overall sentiment, but Bama has been nationally relevant for 90 years at this point. Army wasn't relevant until WWII. Bama was beating and tying teams like Stanford and Washington in the Rose Bowl in the 1920s and still has the record for most Rose Bowl appearances by a non BIG/Pac12 team.

Bryant wasn't really that great

Cholly Mac agrees.

That run in the SEC during the 70's was insane, I lived it. He won the conference every year except two for a decade.

Saban already is tGOAT for Bama.

95% of people that post on tRant were born after Bear died so the consensus here will be that Saban is the best ever. In reality if Saban were ever to catch up with Bear he'd have to coach until he was at least 80 years old and even then he wouldn't collect the accolades that Bear did, kind of like the OP points out. Bear accomplished more than any other college football coach ever will. The modern era has a lot to do with that and what Alabama is doing is impressive, but Saban will never be on the same level as Bear.

Bear was the GOAT. Saban is the greatest of our time.