re: Lane Kiffin; has your opinion of him changed? Let's take a look in the past:

Bama has won 56 more games, in 5 less seasons than USC. Double the NC's. You can attribute Heisman and AA's to early voter bias before 1990. West Coast teams and East Coast teams got all the attention before the proliferation of tv and exposure for southern teams.

The closest to Bama is Notre Dame, with 8 AP poll titles. And using the standards against them, that many like to use against Bama.. winning the bowl the year they won the title.. etc...

5 of their titles, they played in no Bowl game.
2 of the other three, they lost their Bowl game. So of ND's 8 NC's, the only won one Bowl game, the year they played.

That's not to say these teams aren't top tier teams. But realistically, taking away the bias against Bama, and applying the same standards to all teams... Bama is above them.