nobody is comparing their resumes, they're comparing their next 20 years on the job. And despite bama collecting the hardware, this certainly isn't the 11-15 era saban teams. 2 years ago they lost to ole miss and scraped by clemson for the title. Last year they lost the title. This year they lost to auburn and scraped by to win the title in overtime. At the end of the day they are sitll winning them of course, but they aren't the shoo-in they were like when they were running roughshod over LSU and Notre Dame.

On the face of it it's really not a bad question, as you said, but the nerve to even compare saban to anyone, even in a futures capacity, is going to be met with ridicule.

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Posted by SummerOfGeorge

Member since Jul 2013

102699 posts

Posted on 3/21/18 at 3:00 pm to WG_Dawg

Yea - it's not a terrible question. It is a quintessential short term guarantee vs long term risk with bigger reward type question.

If you were going to "bet" on a long term coach in America today to build some lesser version of what Saban has built (year in year out competing for a national title with the best talent in America) it would clearly be Kirby or Dabo (or Urban, I guess, since he's still pretty young comparatively).

The only pause I'd have there is that it's been 1 year. All the peripheral things point towards him continuing to be very good, even better. I just know that even a guy like Saban had to really figure out how to fight through certain things at both LSU and Alabama, and it took years for him to get to the consistent 0-1 loss type teams. If I saw Kirby with a Top 5 team for 2-3 straight years I'd be totally bought in (even if he didn't win a title yet).

Hell, then you have to really tack on "well, what am I getting post-Saban for those next 10 years Kirby is around?". If it's Dabo, are you making the trade (5 of Saban + 10 of Dabo)? If it's Justin Fuente? If it's Matt Luke? The question kind of works off the assumption that post-5 years of Saban the next 10 years get zero return.

I think deeprig fell into it assbackwards, but it is actually a pretty interesting valuation question.

This post was edited on 3/21/18 at 3:03 pm

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Posted by randomways

North Carolina

Member since Aug 2013

12988 posts

Posted on 3/21/18 at 5:39 pm to WG_Dawg

quote:
despite bama collecting the hardware, this certainly isn't the 11-15 era saban teams. 2 years ago they lost to ole miss and scraped by clemson for the title. Last year they lost the title. This year they lost to auburn and scraped by to win the title in overtime. At the end of the day they are sitll winning them of course, but they aren't the shoo-in they were like when they were running roughshod over LSU and Notre Dame.

Come on. You can do better than this. You're trying too hard to make it a serious debate. They were never a "shoo-in." LSU beat them the season Bama ran over them. UGA almost beat them the next season. They didn't finish undefeated any of those years, and you are seriously trying to make the argument they're slipping because they only won one NC in the last two years and both were close games? Clemson was a great team two seasons back and they barely pulled out the win. And you are implying that Bama is slipping because they had to go to OT to beat UGA. Suggesting Bama is on the decline because they should have beaten his team much more easily is a very odd way to pump Kirby.

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Posted by Jake_LaMotta