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Every game day in Tuscaloosa for the last 17 full seasons, from Sept. 1, 2007 to Nov. 18, 2023 - with one inconsequential COVID absence - started the same way. Nick Saban, dressed for success in a classy but understated suit or coat and tie, went directly from the exuberant Walk of Champions to his own quiet, private stroll.
Flanked or trailed by vigilant but unnecessary security guards, the Alabama football coach would circle the field in Bryant-Denny Stadium. He would test the condition of the turf beneath his dress shoes. He would feel the strength and direction of the wind on his face. He would get his mind right for the task at hand, as alone in his thoughts as a man could be in a house that would soon fill to bursting with bodies, noise and, with rare exception, a job well done.
Of the 116 games Alabama played in that shrine with Saban on the sideline, the Crimson Tide won 107 and lost but nine. After dropping three games there in his first season, they let only six slip away over the next 16 years. In that place, in the unpredictable endeavor that is college football, they were all but inevitable.
On offense, they scored 40 points or more 63 times, topped 50 points on 28 occasions - at least once against eight different SEC programs - and reached 60 in eight separate firework displays. On defense, they threw 20 shutouts.
One visitor after another was "Thunderstruck" as Saban's teams emerged from that tunnel to impose their will or find a way by any means necessary. Blocking a field goal on the final play against Tennessee in 2009, which wouldn't be the last time Lane Kiffin got under Saban's skin on the premises. Fulfilling Saban's final pregame locker-room command to "dominate on 3" in a 59-0 embarrassment of Texas A&M in 2014. Beating Gus Malzahn at his own game in a 55-44 Iron Bowl shootout that same season.
On that field, Saban spanked AJ McCarron, spiked countless headsets, gave Kiffin the ultimate ass-chewing and made the most cold-blooded, clear-eyed, dead-on prediction during the 2009 national championship celebration when he vowed, "This is not the end. This is the beginning."
He was not kidding.
Saban owned that field in a way no college football coach has ever quite owned a patch of grass, and that includes Paul Bryant. The Bear went 72-2 there in his 25 years as head coach and icon, but Alabama played its toughest home games during his reign in Birmingham at Legion Field. Pat Sullivan and Auburn. Sam "Bam" Cunningham and USC. Bo Jackson and Auburn. Just to name a few who didn't blink in the face of those crimson jerseys.
Saban's 17 Crimson Tide teams took on all comers in Tuscaloosa, and with the catastrophic exception of Louisiana-Monroe in his first season, it took special performances by elite players and epic teams to take them down.
Alabama's nine home losses under Saban were delivered by:
Three Heisman Trophy winners (Cam Newton, Johnny Manziel and Joe Burrow).
Three No. 1 overall NFL Draft picks (Newton, Burrow and Georgia's Matthew Stafford).
Three national championship teams (2007 LSU, 2010 Auburn and 2019 LSU).
The 2011 LSU team that was undefeated and ranked No. 1 until losing to Alabama in the BCS Championship rematch.
The 2023 Texas team that reached the College Football Playoff.
It took the best of the best to beat the best of all-time on that field.
For all those reasons, there is no better way for Alabama to honor Saban than by putting his name on the field. The trustees proposed and approved it, and the university will make it official today with pregame and halftime ceremonies. In a chef's kiss perfect plan, the pregame ceremony that begins at the Walk of Champions is scheduled to conclude with Nick and Terry Saban taking his familiar pregame stroll together across that sweet, green grass inside.
The walk will have come full circle.
Some killjoys have suggested Nick Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium, while it has a nice ring to it, isn't enough. They have suggested removing the name of seminal university president George Denny from the building itself and adding Saban's name to Bryant's. They have argued it would be the ultimate tribute to the two coaches who won six national championships each from that home base.
Bryant-Saban Stadium. Allow me to call BS on that idea. First, you don't honor Saban by dismissing Denny's legacy because he has those chimes down the street named after him, too. Knowing Saban and his old-school respect for the chain of command, demonstrated by his frequent praise of Dr. Robert Witt and Mal Moore, the visionary president and AD who hired him, he would have vetoed that notion himself.
Let all naysayers know. The field is where it happens. Where it matters. Where all the work of the previous week, in practices and meetings and film study, shows up, plays out and pays off. Or not.
In the stadium, they sell things. Hot dogs, Cokes and t-shirts. The stadium is a marketplace, a bizarre bazaar of food, beverages and souvenirs. The stadium is an entertainment venue, with infrared lights flashing and every kind of music blaring, from No Flex Zone to Dixieland Delight, with intermittent public service announcements and weather reports.
It's true that Saban's contributions at Alabama extended far beyond putting trophies in display cases. He put smiles on the faces of boosters, trustees, alums - actual and sidewalk - and a generation of spoiled students, when he wasn't blasting them for leaving early for the frat parties. He put butts in the seats, 100,000 at a time, and in front of TV sets by the millions. He put dollars in the pockets of everyone in his orbit, from his players to his staffers to program and university administrators. Local business owners loved him like a tax cut. During the toughest of economic times, he was a one-man stimulus package.
That's big-picture stuff, which led to not one but two stadium expansions/renovations during his tenure. Under different circumstances, his name would be right at home on the stadium, but there is no debating this point. None of the benefits that accrued during his unsurpassed tenure would have been possible if not for what happened on that field.
The field is where he worked. The field is where he ruled. The field is where his name belongs.
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