For a variety of reasons, Saturday in Tuscaloosa was one of the biggest days in the last 10 years.Take it from someone who spent the majority of his college years watching badly coached football. Saturday was a big, big day, both for Alabama and the rest of the state.
It doesn’t matter who won, or who really caught the fans’ eyes, or who was a disappointment. Instead, Saturday was a day for Alabama fans to truly feel excited about football again, without puzzling over questions like, “How come our coach looks like he ate a small child?” or “Why is it that the coach hasn’t figured out how to use Ken Darby in three years?”
For all the fond memories Alabama fans have had over the last 10 years — for example ... well, their team did beat Florida once and Tennessee a few times, and had that one day down at Auburn where Andrew Zow caught fire — they haven’t been this enthused about a new head coach since 1990, when Gene Stallings came riding into town (pretty much his destiny, if you think about it).
But, for all the good Nick Saban’s hiring has done Alabama — and rest assured, it will do worlds — Tide fans are just as excited about the harm it does to other schools. Specifically, they expect Tennessee to stop raiding into their state for recruits (and LSU as well, while we’re at it) and they expect to bring about multiple coaching changes around the conference. Eventually, I mean.
Right or wrong, the guy Saban will draw the most comparisons to is Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville, who’s quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) built a perennial contender on the Plains.
Whether Alabama fans will admit it (and some will), Auburn right now is where Alabama wants to be: a consistent winner against its rivals, a perennial 10-win squad, a championship contender every year.
Saban and Tuberville seem eerily similar at first glance. Both came to their respective jobs under dubious circumstances (both have ominous quotes, Tuberville with his “pine box” quote about Ole Miss and Saban with his “I’m not gonna be the coach at Alabama” quote while in Miami). Both have served at other schools also in the SEC West (Ole Miss and LSU).
Furthermore, both make exorbitant amounts of money — and by the way, if you don’t think Tuberville’s sitting down with Jimmy Sexton sometime soon and wondering aloud why a guy who hasn’t done anything yet is making twice as much as he is, you’re crazy.
Both guys lorded over special seasons. Saban won a national championship in 2003 at LSU, even if they had to share part of it with USC (and for the love of God, if you have any LSU fan friends, don’t bring this up to them because they will threaten your life). Tuberville’s undefeated Auburn team in 2004 remains one of the great snubs of the modern era of football, right up there with 1966 Alabama and 1994 Penn State — in the irony of ironies, the only undefeated SEC team since Tennessee in 1998 didn’t win a national championship, while two teams with one loss (2003 LSU, 2007 Florida) did.
Both guys are perceived as defensive minds, and both favor similar defensive schemes, favoring speed over size (but, quite frankly, will accept both). That 2003 LSU defense remains one of the best single units I’ve ever witnessed in person; some NFL teams would have struggled against those guys.
On offense, both guys employ wunderkind assistants. Al Borges, derided when he first came to Auburn, is now one of the biggest points of pride among Tiger fans (even if his offense stunk down the stretch in 2006). Saban’s brilliant offensive mind goes to Major Applewhite, who was turning heads as the offensive coordinator at Rice before coming to Tuscaloosa (he’s roughly the same age as I am, which means he’s really young or I’m getting old).
The two men have similar winning percentages as coaches: Tuberville’s is .550 (.750 since 2000) in 11 years; Saban sports a .642 in 13 seasons. In head-to-head battles, it’s basically a draw as well — in five matchups, Tuberville holds a 3-2 edge, with the condition that Saban’s team probably should have won the ’04 game (you’d have to watch a tape to understand).
The biggest difference between the two is personality. Tuberville carries the persona of a CEO, someone whose job is to make speeches, kiss babies and hold up five fingers to the fans. Saban, on the other hand, has the reputation of a leather-head, someone who sleeps in his office 49 weeks out of the year and watches football during his spare time away from football.
Think of Saban as the Vijay Singh to Tuberville’s Phil Mickelson.
The beauty of this debate, of course, is that it won’t matter in a few months. Once the two guys meet on the field in front of 100,000 screamers clad in every conceivable shade of red and blue, all these numbers suddenly seem insignificant.
On paper, it looks like a draw. You don’t know how good that sounds to Alabama fans, though, given what they’ve seen the last few years.
