re: Did Alabama “make” Saban and the Bear, or did Saban and the Bear make Alabama?

Saban never had back to back 10 win seasons before he came to Alabama! He’s now had like 16 in a row.

Bryant played at Alabama, won at KY and A&M.. but he became a legend at Alabama!

Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, Gene Stallings..

Hell, Mike Dubose and Bill Curry won an SEC Championship at Alabama!

Every coach since Ears Whitworth has had at least 1 10 win season.

Dennis fricking Fran won the west his 2nd year but couldn’t go to Atlanta because of Dubose dumb arse.

The answer is “It’s Alabama “!

Saban and Bryant are the best 2 coaches in history.. but they also coached at The University of Alabama and that made all the difference

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Alabama expects to be great in football, and works to make that happen everyday.

The results are evident

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Your fanbase is so fricking weird and creepy with the delusional arrogance. Y’all have had 2 insanely successful stretches under 2 coaches and the rest of your program’s modern history is pretty pedestrian.

1 national championship from coaches not named Bryant or Saban since WWII. Ten 10-win seasons from coaches not named Bryant or Saban since WWII.

There’s absolutely nothing about Alabama that says “consistent excellence” without the two greatest coaches in the history of the sport. Extremely weird that some of y’all are unaware of that, the inevitable collapse post-Saban is going to be so funny to watch

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Your fanbase is so fricking weird and creepy with the delusional arrogance. Y’all have had 2 insanely successful stretches under 2 coaches and the rest of your program’s modern history is pretty pedestrian.

1 national championship from coaches not named Bryant or Saban since WWII. Ten 10-win seasons from coaches not named Bryant or Saban since WWII.

There’s absolutely nothing about Alabama that says “consistent excellence” without the two greatest coaches in the history of the sport. Extremely weird that some of y’all are unaware of that, the inevitable collapse post-Saban is going to be so funny to watch

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Since 1940

Non-Bryant/Saban
- 41 Seasons
- Overall : 299-161-13 (65%) (would rank #12 all-time in D1, #3 in the SEC behind Georgia and Tennessee and tied with LSU) (LSU has a 65% all time winning %)
- SEC : 172-115-12 (60%) (would rank #2 with Tennessee all-time behind Georgia, who would slide into #1 at 63%) (LSU is 59%)
- 21 AP Top 25 Finishes (51%) (would equate to 44) (LSU has 43) (Auburn has 40) (Georgia has 41)
- 11 AP Top 10 Finishes (27%) (would equate to 23) (LSU has 23) (Auburn has 19) (Georgia has 27)
- 4 AP Top 5 Finishes (10%) (would equate to 9) (LSU has 10) (Auburn has 9) (Georgia has 14)
- 5 SEC Championships (12%) (equivalent of 11 SEC Titles over 91 year history of conference - would rank 4th behind Georgia (14), Tennessee (13) and LSU (12)
- 1 National Championship (2.4%) (would equal 2 all time, assuming the AP poll era of 87 years)


So if you extrapolate Alabama's non-Bryant/Saban era from just post-WW2 (end of Frank Thomas, Red Drew, Ears Whitworth, Ray Perkins, Bill Curry, Gene Stallings, Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Shula) you basically come out to the #3/4 program in the SEC. Alabama without Bryant and Saban is basically the equivalent of LSU.

Now, go take away the #1 and #2 coaches of all-time from any other SEC program and let me know if they crack the Top 3 or 4.

No Saban/Miles from LSU
No Dooley/Smart from Georgia
No Dye/Jordan from Auburn
No Spurrier/Meyer from Florida
No Fulmer/Neyland from Tennessee

LSU might - Dietzel and Charlie Mac plus O's 2019 season. That's about it. Georgia would still have Richt and Butts, so they could possible sneak in. The difference is both those programs had huge lows whereas Alabama's worst lows were a handful of ugly seasons (1984, 1997, 2000) whereas LSU had mostly 2 decades of it (1981-1999).



But sure, the people that are going to be shocked are definitely going to be us and not the folks who seem to think we'll revert back to teams with 10-20% less scholarship players than their opponents led by unqualified coaches. I'm sure Saban will leave the next guy a similar situation. Just ask Les Miles.

Bryant and Saban are obviously two of the best to ever do it. But UA is committed to football success like few schools are. When you have the President, AD, donors, etc all behind you, it does make a big difference not to be battling the academic heads and fighting the political battles many football programs are constantly embroiled in within their university systems.

I agree...Bama got the 2 best cfb coaches in history and they maintained that status right up to the time Kirby Smart became a headcoach.

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Ms. Terry herself has stated that they probably would've had the same or more success if they'd stayed at LSU.

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Checkmate.

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In the modern era, Alabama has no quantifiable "advantage" over any other elite program

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There is some truth to this, but the list of elite programs is very small.

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In the modern era, Alabama has no quantifiable "advantage" over any other elite program, they just happened to have an opening when Saban wanted a job.

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There are intangibles though, which do matter, and when you’ve mostly won at a high level for a long long time there’s an ingrained sense of expectation players and coaches tend to rise to. It’s human nature if you think about it. It’s very hard to come in and have higher expectations as a coach than the place has for itself. I think you see that at LSU today as compared to 1999. Though we had a very good history relatively speaking there wasn’t that belief ingrained in the place back then.

It took a Nick Saban to kick start that here, though while he did a lot of the early legwork to get it there the LSU of today is a much different program and that’s due to the hard work of a LOT of players and coaches.

If I remember correctly, Bama has 1 national title in the poll era outside of Bryant and Saban. There is no question that those 2 coaches are the 2 greatest and that they made Alabama.

When he took the job at LSU Saban had never won a national title. He was just thought of as another hot coaching prospect. He overcame a lot of meddling boosters and maybe the cheapest AD in the SEC to get LSU to the top of the heap. It took him 5 years to really load up the LSU roster but had he stayed past '04, he had a roster with almost no holes and would have probably won 2 titles between '05 and '07 and there would have been no '08 drop off like we saw with Les Miles. I knew Miles was a buffoon in year one and the title in '07 didn't change my opinion of him. he was clearly riding Saban's roster and as soon as those players were gone, the 4-5 loss seasons started.

Saban got Bama on track quicker because he was an established championship coach which helped in recruiting and in getting Bama boosters to sit down, shut up and write the checks.

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So if you extrapolate Alabama's non-Bryant/Saban era from just post-WW2 (end of Frank Thomas, Red Drew, Ears Whitworth, Ray Perkins, Bill Curry, Gene Stallings, Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Shula) you basically come out to the #3/4 program in the SEC. Alabama without Bryant and Saban is basically the equivalent of LSU.

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Nice pivot. We have multiple national championships since 2000 with 3 different coaches, something that has taken Alabama 70 years to accomplish. Regardless, nothing about those numbers say “best program ever” like y’all are pretending in this thread.

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No Saban/Miles from LSU
No Dooley/Smart from Georgia
No Dye/Jordan from Auburn
No Spurrier/Meyer from Florida
No Fulmer/Neyland from Tennessee

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Not a single one of those coaches, including Saban at LSU, are remotely in the same league as Bryant and Saban at Alabama. Again, the question was whether or not Saban/Bryant have made Bama into the best program in the country or if the program made them into the best coaches, and the answer is very obviously that it’s them making the program and not the other way around.

I will certainly admit that your state and admin is filled with a bunch of nutcases who want nothing more than to succeed at football and have done a moderately good job at that without Saban/Bryant, but Alabama isn’t inherently great