While the true meaning of Ringo Starr’s classic hit “Photograph” is about a sentimental loss of a lover, the lyric that starts the No. 1 song, “Ev’ry time I see your face, It reminds me of the places we used to go.” This same sentiment might be appropriate for both coaches.
The places they used to go together was the national championship as Kirby Smart coordinated four of Nick Saban’s six Alabama national championships. Now it seems both Saban and Smart are going in different directions in their careers.
Saban, who has established a Hall of Fame career, is in the final stages of one of the sport’s most dominant runs.
Smart is in the midst of establishing his greatness, with back-to-back national championships and the roster to potentially make it three in a row. He is trying to do something his mentor hasn’t yet been able to do: Win three consecutive national championships. You have to go back to Bernie Bierman and the 1934-36 Minnesota Golden Gophers to find the last coach to achieve such a feat.
While no one will deny Saban’s place in the history of the game being the greatest coach of all time, I feel we are in the midst of a transition period of who is the “lead dawg” of coaches with Smart assuming that title.
One can debate why Saban is still the best in the game, I am here to give you four reasons why the transition of Smart passing Saban as the current best coach in the country is happening.
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Age
While I am not one to commit age discrimination against Saban, there always has been this “age demarcation” of when a coach passes the age of 70, there has been a noticeable decline.
Joe Paterno encountered this at Penn State. Bobby Bowden at Florida State, Frank Beamer’s decline accelerated as he approached 70, as did Steve Spurrier.
Saban, to his credit, seems to still defy logic making the College Football Playoff National Championship Game during his age 70 season, and won a New Year’s Six Bowl last season.
But all good things will come to an end.
With the advent of the transfer portal that helped him land running back Jahmyr Gibbs from Georgia Tech a season ago and NIL, has delayed the decline a bit.
The defense people will use against the age argument is Saban’s past three recruiting classes, two of the three were No. 1 and the third was No. 2.
I will get into a critical position group later in this article where Saban has had some rough luck in this, but the key is will all these recruits pan out? Will they all stay at Alabama?
Saban turns 72 on Halloween, at some point the question of “Will you be there for my three or four years at Alabama?” will get harder and harder to commit and answer to recruits.
Nor can he guarantee that his successor will be as good or effective as him. Alabama will do everything to lure any top coach to Tuscaloosa, but no coach will want to be the initial successor to Saban. The standard is too unrealistic for a coaching mere mortal.
Due to the fact that Smart is nearly a quarter-century young, his future is much brighter with endless possibilities with an expanded playoffs than Saban’s present.
National Championships & Recent Success
In the wrestling ring, “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair always quipped, “To be the man, you gotta beat the man.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jcc4WTEnY
While Saban owns the head-to-head battle with Smart, winning four out of five matchups, the fifth matchup may have been the most consequential.
Alabama had defeated Georgia in the 2021 SEC Championship 41-24 behind Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young’s 421 yards and three touchdown performance. The SEC Championship Game win was costly, losing dynamic receiver John Metchie III to a torn ACL.
The two teams would meet again in the national championship game, where Metchie’s wide receiver partner Jameson Williams would also tear his ACL. With Young not having the talent on the perimeter to exploit the Georgia secondary, the Bulldogs took full advantage of Alabama’s injuries to win the program’s first national championship since 1980 with a 33-18.
The momentum from that win continued into the 2022 season saw Smart take advantage of a very advantageous situation schedule wise as the Bulldogs found their footing and returned to the College Football Playoff. They outlasted Ohio State and demolished TCU.
The back-to-back national championships for Georgia made the Dawgs the first program to do it since Alabama’s 2011 and 2012 championships, and the first program to achieve this in the College Football Playoff era.
Smart has set the new standard. Beating Saban and finally getting that monkey off of his back was clearly a psychological boon for him. Now every other mountain summit seems attainable, and that is a very scary proposition.
In the previous two seasons, Smart is 29-1 and Saban is 24-4.
Kirby Owning Georgia
One of the major reasons why Smart is beginning to assert his dominance nationally is his ability to keep Georgia talent at home.
NFL scouts for years assessed that Georgia was a sleeping giant. The assessment was if Georgia could keep a significant amount of instate recruits, they would be dominant.
Since 2018, Georgia has landed 37 in-state Top 20 recruits, including 24 Top 10 in-state recruits that has this year’s No. 1 overall recruit quarterback Dylan Raiola, who transferred to Buford (GA) from Phoenix Pinnacle (AZ).
When you consider the hyper competitive recruiting for this rich talent and the close proximity to programs like Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Clemson, South Carolina, Florida State, and Florida plus national programs like Ohio State, Penn State, Notre Dame, Michigan who like to go after the same talent.
It is outstanding what Smart and his staff has done to keep the talent at home, something no other Georgia coach has done in generations.
With the benefit of owning this talent rich state, Smart has a foundation to keep up at or ahead of Saban’s level for the foreseeable future.
Recruiting and Producing Defensive Lineman
If there is one particular area in which Smart has exceeded Saban, it is in his ability to recruit and churn out elite defensive linemen.
One of the bedrocks of the Saban Alabama dynasty was recruiting the best and producing NFL-quality defensive linemen. But the last defensive lineman Saban had picked in the first round of the NFL Draft was Quinnen Williams back in 2019.
Since then, Georgia has had four go in the first round, including the No. 1 overall pick in 2022, defensive end Travon Walker. Between 2018 and 2020, Georgia landed stalwarts like Walker, Jordan Davis, Devonte Wyatt, and Jalen Carter.
Alabama had 16 defensive lineman commitments since 2018. Of those, eight left the program, including arguably Saban’s biggest bust, 2019’s No. 1 overall player Antonio Alfano.
While Alabama has put more emphasis on their defensive line classes from 2021 to 2023, Georgia has been right there with the Crimson Tide. It will be interesting to see how highly touted five-star defensive linemen Keon Keeley (Alabama) and Mykel Williams (Georgia) fare, but as of now, Smart is the pre-eminent coach in this department.
Conclusion
No coach is invincible. All coaches, even the all-time great ones, are simply mere mortals. As Saban ages, the knowledge of the game isn’t lost, or the will to win isn’t diminished either. What every great athlete and coach finds is the one mountain or opponent that remains undefeated is that of time.
Time catches up to all of us, and it has begun to catch up to Nick Saban.
Alabama will be relevant until Saban decides he isn’t living up to his standard of excellence and “The Process” isn’t good enough anymore.
We are experiencing a transition of a new top coach in the game in Kirby Smart.
Back-to-back national championships help signal that change. Landing a talent like the No. 1 overall recruit in quarterback Dylan Raiola influences that at the most important position in sports, Smart has positioned Georgia for the best chance to succeed. With a punishing ground game and ferocious defense that three of the previous four have finished in the Top 5 of scoring defenses, including two (2019, 2021) that led the country.
In the conclusion of Starr’s hit, he pens “Every time I see your face it reminds me of the places we used to go but all I’ve got is a photograph and I realise you’re not comin’ back any more,” maybe we need to come to the realization that Nick Saban may never go back to the national championship and we may see continued dominance of Smart’s Georgia team on the national scene.
For now its Smart is the ultimate chessmaster everyone is looking to dethrone, including Nick Saban.
