5 perennial losers Nick Saban could turn into champions

5. West Virginia Mountaineers

It might be fun for one of the greatest college football recruiters and coaches of all-time to return to where they started out—Saban’s home state of West Virginia.

Though his first job as a coach was as a general assistant at Kent State, before moving up to Linebackers Coach after just a year, Saban was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, and returned to West Virginia to coach the defensive backs.

West Virginia has had some incredibly fun, successful years. However, in 2019, under first-year head coach Neal Brown with a 5-7 record, failing to qualify for a bowl game for the first time since 2013.

If Saban wanted to return to West Virginia, he could be the best shot at reviving a program that has lost seven of their last 10 bowl games and hasn’t won an outright conference title since 2011, after winning the Big East six times from 2003-2011.

They’ve been underwhelming for a few seasons in a row, but Saban could bring back the good old days, potentially even dragging the Mountaineers back to a .500 record in bowl games (they sit at 15-22).