College Football Bowls 2016: 10 best big game head coaches
By John Buhler
Nick Saban has earned his way onto the Mount Rushmore of college football coaches. He’s been the best college football coach since 2000. Saban is 204-60-1 as a college head coach at four different stops: Toledo, Michigan State, LSU, and Alabama.
He has gone 124-41-1 in conference play, won 11 division titles, eight conference championships and five national titles. Saban won his first National Championship in 2003 at LSU. He spent two years in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins (2005-06) before coming back to the SEC in 2007.
Since coming back to Alabama, Saban has won four national titles (2009, 2011, 2012, 2015) and has made all three College Football Playoffs to date. He’s just better than almost every head coach on the planet. A Saban-led team strikes fear in the eyes of even the best coaches he goes up against.
If there is any criticism of Saban as a college head coach, he will lose a bowl game or two. In bowls, Saban is 10-8. At the end of the season, he will be either 10-9, 11-9, or 12-8 in bowl games depending on how his 2016 Crimson Tide team plays in the 2017 College Football Playoff. Alabama faces Washington in the Peach Bowl.