College football coach rankings: Has Dabo Swinney officially surpassed Nick Saban?
By Phil Poling
No. 2: Nick Saban, Alabama
Falling short of the top spot on our list is Alabama head coach Nick Saban. The West Virginia-native has been the cream of the NCAA coaching crop for the past decade, the entire 21st-century, really, winning two CFP Championships and three BCS titles. But in recent years, we’ve seen Saban take some unexpected lumps.
It isn’t that he’s stumbled from his once-untouchable perch, though. Saban’s Crimson Tide have still reached the College Football Playoff every year of its existence, posting a 6-2 record. Included in those six wins are the 2016 and 2018 National Championships. The first came against Clemson, while the Tide beat Georgia in a second-half comeback for the ages in the second. Saban’s coached the Crimson Tide to an 11-5 postseason mark during his 12 years at the helm of the program, but he didn’t experience the same success elsewhere, winning just three games to five losses at Michigan State and LSU in postseason play.
The caliber of players Saban is able to attract to Alabama is a bit different than his previous stops, though. Only once – in 12 years of coaching Alabama – has a Nick Saban recruiting class ranked outside the top five. It happened his first season on the job, and they still ranked 12th in the nation. To take things a step further, from 2011 to 2018, Alabama hauled in the No. 1 recruiting class in all of college football. That’s insane.
Saban does a solid job of ushering his players into the NFL, too. Since he took over in Tuscaloosa, he’s had 29 first-round draft picks. That’s the most by a coach at any single school, but Saban also owns the record for most first-round picks over a career, too, with 34. Specifically at Alabama, though, Saban’s had more first-round picks than losses; he’s coached the Tide to a 146-21 overall record.