The college football world felt shockwaves Wednesday when long-time Alabama coach Nick Saban announced his retirement. Saban won six of his seven career national championships with the Crimson Tide, and before the 2016 season in Tuscaloosa, he hired Brent Key to coach the Crimson Tide offensive line.
Key would spend three seasons on the sidelines with Saban.
“People can argue about it, but I say he’s the greatest coach of all time,” Key told 680 The Fan on Thursday.
Key was returning from the American Football Coaches Association convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday and was in flight when news broke that Saban’s tenure at Alabama had come to an end. He said he had at least 20 text messages pop up in response to that news when his mobile phone regained cellular service back on land.
From 2016-18, Key worked with Saban as Alabama’s offensive line coach. The Crimson Tide lost only three games during that span, won a national championship against Georgia and lost two title games to Clemson. Key left Tuscaloosa after the 2018 season to join former Tech coach Geoff Collins’ staff ahead of the 2019 season.
Key is now going into his second season as Tech’s coach after leading the Yellow Jackets to a 7-6 season and a win in the Gasparilla Bowl in December. His time spent on air Wednesday touched on the successes of that first season, but mostly on Saban’s legacy — which Key got to witness firsthand.
“Just a reflection back on what type of career he’s had and what he’s been able to accomplish and how he’s been able to do it,” Key said on his reaction to Wednesday’s news. “And not just by people (Saban’s) affected on the football field and in the coaching world, the amount of young men that he’s been able to change their lives and provide a better future for ‘em.”
Key recalled in 2009, while he was an assistant coach at Central Florida, he and former Tech quarterback George Godsey made a day trip to Tuscaloosa to watch Alabama prepare for the national championship game against Texas — a team that beat UCF 35-3 earlier that season. Alabama’s offensive line coach at the time was Joe Pendry, and he invited Key into the film room to watch how the Crimson Tide was preparing to matchup against the Longhorns.
Key said that Pendry became sort of a mentor to him in the years that followed, and Key could only surmise that Pendry may have put Key’s name in front of Saban’s desk when Saban was looking for an offensive assistant in the early part of the 2010s – the first time Key was interviewed by Saban. A few years later Key would land the job back in his home state of Alabama.
“It was a three-, four-, five-day long process,” Key recalled. “It’s not just football talk. It’s evaluating prospects, it’s evaluating guys, ‘Where do you see these guys if they start at your position?’ but also other positions. Meeting with everyone in the building. It’s a long, very thorough process that once you go through it you understand why he’s been able to get it right so many times.”
With this week’s news that Saban’s days coaching Alabama are over, it’s likely Key won’t ever get a chance to go head-to-head with a coach that helped Key’s tenure continue down the right path. Those three seasons in Tuscaloosa continued to mold Key into the coach he is today, and there are undoubtedly, albeit indirectly, Saban fingerprints on Key’s program.
“(Saban’s) retiring from his current job, he’s not stopping working,” Key said. “In my opinion, he will wake up at the same time, have the same routine and work a different set of tasks throughout that day. If I had to bet, I would be he was in the office (Thursday) morning at the same time that he was every other day.”
Does Key go about running his football program the same way?
“Yes,” he said sternly.
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