As college football dynasties go, Alabama is working on the kind of concentrated greatness that eluded even Bear Bryant in his spectacular prime.
A win over Notre Dame on Monday night would make it three BCS national championships in the space of four years for the Crimson Tide. Bear Bryant won six titles overall at Alabama, but three out of five was his most unrelenting single stretch, with first-place finishes in 1961, 1964 and 1965.
Does this make Nick Saban the greatest college coach in history? No, but there’s never been a greedier one. The man already has one national title at LSU (2003), two at Alabama (2009 and 2011) and a sturdy platform in place to win a few more if the NFL doesn’t buy him back.
“It should happen again for some team, if not in my lifetime then maybe in my son’s lifetime,” former Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard said when asked to put Alabama’s current run in perspective. “A lot of things have to happen and luck is one of them. Guys have to stay healthy, and you’ve got to get a guy like Cam Newton out of there.
“If Cam Newton’s at Auburn for a couple of years as opposed to one, what is it like?”
This is what we are down to, poking hypothetical holes into the Alabama hype. In the real world, where only wins and losses are counted, the Tide deserve the utmost respect for throwing their weight around not only in BCS title games but within the SEC itself. The conference has won six consecutive national championships, after all, with Florida, LSU and Auburn taking their turns at the top during that period. That’s a pretty nasty neighborhood.
Compare that to the famous dynasties of Nebraska (1994, 1995 and 1997) and Notre Dame (1946, 1947 and 1949), the only teams to actually hit Alabama’s lofty goal of three national titles in the space of four years. Neither of those teams faced the same consistent level of resistance that Saban does, and neither had to play conference championship games.
Tom Osborne’s Cornhuskers ruled the old Big 8/Big 12 at the time, with Oklahoma stuck in a serious slump.
The Fighting Irish, on other hand, played an independent schedule in the 1940’s and faced a total of six top-10 teams during Frank Leahy’s epic four-year peak. One of those games was a classic 0-0 tie with No. 1 Army at Yankee Stadium in 1946.
Right about now some of you out there are screaming that Miami’s dynastic past deserves a mention, if not an outright declaration of preeminence, in this dynastic discussion. Sorry, but even at their highest frequency of success, the Hurricanes won three championships in a five-year stretch, not four years, and one of those was a split title.
Any way you slice it, trumping every hot hand throughout history is a tall order.
Oklahoma, remember, went 60-3-1 between 1953 and 1958, with 47 consecutive victories, 27 shutouts and back-to-back national titles as the highlights for Bud Wilkinson’s most dominant teams. Barry Switzer later won three national titles with the Sooners, but there was a 10-year gap between the second and the last. Keeping the trophies coming before there is time for dust to collect on the shelf is the toughest trick of all, and it’s one that Saban seems to have down.
“Your program is defined by consistency,” said Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, “and Alabama is the model. I concede that. It’s where I want to be. We want to be here next year.”
Back-to-back BCS title shots? Wow, that’s a mouthful for any program, but Alabama is in position to repeat as champions Monday night, and that’s with four of last year’s stars gone in the first round of the 2011 NFL draft. Kelly, naturally enough, is careful to keep this Alabama assembly-line image from getting inside his players’ heads. Notre Dame is the team with the perfect record. Notre Dame is No. 1.
That’s enough to process at this point. Any more and it begins to get dangerous, for both teams.
“Michael Jordan always says it doesn’t make any difference how many game-winning shots I’ve made in the past,” Saban said. “The only one that matters is the next one.”
Monday night is no slam dunk, in other words. That’s why dynasties of every size and shape are best measured from the distance of a decade or two, once all the mystery has been squeezed out of them.
About the Author
