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