ATLANTA — At some point it’s going to end. The day will arrive when the realization that he can do no more will overwhelm a sadistically sweet passion for winning, and he’ll find a spot on Lake Burton with Miss Terry and throw it in neutral.
Might not be at the end of this season, might not be for another two or three. But if you’re all things Crimson, you better start preparing for the end of Nick Saban.
Alabama’s 42-13 victory over Missouri Saturday afternoon was more than another SEC Championship for Saban or locking down a spot in the first College Football Playoff.
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It was one step closer to there’s nothing left.
“I’ve often thought about asking him how he does it,” said Alabama guard Arie Kouandjio. “I look up to him as a coach, a man, a businessman. What keeps you driving like that, what’s inside you to be the best? How do you keep it going?”
When you think about it, it’s fascinating Saban has made it this far. Coaches with his personality, his need to be better than everyone else, eventually reach saturation. Or burnout.
When you’ve won three of the last five national titles; when you’ve made the big, bad SEC your personal playpen and when you have to stack and pack elite recruits like game day traffic on McFarland Avenue in Tuscaloosa, what’s the challenge?
“The goal for us to push ourselves to be the best,” Saban says. “We’re not playing the other team; we’re playing to see how good we can be.”
No one is playing better than the Tide. No one can match Alabama’s man-for-man talent.
No one — no matter who that wacky CFP selection committee spits out — will beat Alabama in the postseason.
Saban has won with a caretaker quarterback, and one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the game. He’s now winning with a quarterback who last year was playing tailback — and is now the most valuable player in the toughest conference in the game.
He has responded from the two toughest moments of his career at Alabama — the loss to Florida in the 2008 SEC Championship Game, and last year's loss to Auburn — with dead-aim championship seasons.
In eight years at Alabama, he has won 86 of 102 games, three SEC championships and three national championships. He has been so good, only a crazy Kick Six against Auburn and three third-down touchdown passes by Tim Tebow against Florida have kept him from likely winning five SEC and national titles.
“I’ve been here five years, and this might sound crazy, but you definitely look back on the games you let get away,” said Tide center Ryan Kelly. “Maybe that’s a sign of a team that’s striving for perfection. You’re never there, no matter how it looks.”
By the look of Saturday’s wipeout of Missouri — and the way Alabama has played since its only loss of the season in early October to Ole Miss — it may not be perfection, but Saban clearly is on his way to another national championship. The last team in this meatgrinder of a conference to be this dominant was Florida in the mid 2000s under Urban Meyer.
Meyer won two national titles in three seasons, and the only thing that kept him from three out of four was Saban in 2009. A year later, Meyer resigned as the Gators' coach — at this point, who cares why? — and Florida hasn’t been the same since.
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Almost on cue, that was the once feared Florida program Saturday morning, five hours before the SEC’s Super Bowl kicked off, holding a press conference to introduce Jim McElwain as its new coach. Not a big name, elite coach with championship pedigree, but a coach who, more than anything, was a guy who took the job.
If you don’t think this can be you soon, Alabama, let me reintroduce you to a few gentlemen you might remember: Mike Dubose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Price, Mike Shula.
You can’t just plug and play another Saban. You can’t look to college football or the NFL and find another guy who will roll into Tuscaloosa and be so spectacularly successful, he just might make everyone forget about — hushed tones, here — The Bear.
“He’s a legend here,” said Alabama senior linebacker Trey DePriest. “He was a legend when I first got here.”
Saban is a once-in-a-career coaching hire, the perfect storm of a championship coach who stumbled around in the NFL for a couple of years, realized he wasn’t a good fit and dropped back down to college football with a chip on his shoulder. Then made everyone in his way pay for it.
Saban doesn’t have a perfect team this fall. His defense can’t get a consistent pass rush and sack the quarterback (not just affect the quarterback, Nick), and his secondary lets way to many deep balls get thrown over their heads.
His offense gets in ruts and forgets it has the best player (wideout Amari Cooper) on the field, and it’s just not as fluid as it usually is on game day. But just as it has played out over and over this season, Sims makes a few plays on offense and the defense gets a stop and the next thing you know, Alabama is up two or three scores and on its way to yet another championship.
Once Missouri closed to 21-13 after back-to-back drives in the third quarter proved beyond a doubt that the Tide secondary has problems letting receivers get behind them, Sims led a 64-yard touchdown drive with a couple of key third-down throws and a touchdown pass — and the rout was on.
“Once we get it figured out,” said Tide defensive tackle A’Shawn Robinson, “it starts rolling and forget about it.”
At this point it’s so predictable, you wonder when it becomes mundane. When the grind of winning a championship doesn’t eventually become the road to the inevitable for a 63-year-old coach who could go 10 more years if he wanted.
“Part of the reason I love this team is we have great chemistry,” Saban said. “There’s a lot of opportunity on our team where guys can be selfish, but everybody kind of has each other’s back. In this day and age with the way people are, that’s kind of unique. It’s really appreciated by me as a coach.”
Eventually, and maybe sooner than we think, Saban will do what he says satisfies him as much as anything. He’ll hop in his boat and get on the lake and start clearing brush from the shoreline, the monotonous chore that allows him to just be.
The brush always grows back; never stops creeping, never dies. It is relentless.
The perfect opponent for the coach one step closer to nothing left.