The only game coaches love more than coaching the actual game is “Hey, who have you coached with?”
Hey Coach, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too, coach.
Coach, didn’t you coach with the same coach that I coached with when we were assistant coaches to that one head coach?
Yes, I did, Coach. He’s a helluva guy. And one helluva coach. And the head coach under whom we trained…
Now, he’s a helluva guy and a helluva coach.
They pump fists (or hold up their drinks) and say in unison: To the coach!
As of the latest version of college football playoff begins, those conversations will take place on shore shores and in hotel bars from Oxford to Oregon. And almost every toast/dedication will be in honor of a man whose still-growing legacy stands in a forest of red sequoia-like coaching trees.
“I know there’s a lot of coaching trees out there that were started by a lot of legends,” Kirby Smart said on the eve of winning the SEC championship game in Atlanta. After being at the top for a decade Georgia BulldogsHe himself has established a nursery of many plants. “But I’m not sure anyone can match what Nick Saban has done when it comes to developing coaches, preparing them to run their programs.”
Smart smartly explained that for him, the “coaching tree” is not about where someone started their career or how many years they spent with a coach, but rather the impact the root coach has had, even if the assistant has only worked on his staff for one season.
“For me, it’s about the mentor aspect of it,” Smart said of Saban during the same weekend when he said he called Saban for advice and also did a live interview with Saban on “College GameDay.” “Can I call that coach whenever I need, even if I’m now coaching against him in the same conference with questions or need advice? That’s real impact. And I think that’s the relationship I’ll tell you we all have with him.”
couple Indiana Hoosiers Head coach Curt Cignetti: “He hasn’t coached a game in almost two years, and I think his influence has only grown since then. I can’t speak to the 150 years of college football history that all worked for Bear Bryant or Knute Rockne or those guys. But there’s certainly no argument about Nick Saban’s impact in the here and now.”
Here, in the second edition of the 12-team CFP format, and now, that bracket begins with the first of four opening round games on Friday night when alabama faces oklahomaFive of those dozen teams are led by former Saban assistants. It includes four of the top six teams, and all five are ranked in the top nine.
This doesn’t include the two teams that barely missed the playoffs, ranked 13th and 25th, or the coach who was running a sixth-ranked team but left to lead another school… oh, by the way, a team that Saban once coached to a national title and made such a move only after the coach talked to Saban about the decision. Nor does it include the many others running programs across the country who are deployed at every level of college football.
CFP List:
• Indiana, led by Cignetti, who was on Saban’s initial Alabama staff in 2007, working for five seasons as a wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, has stockpiled a pair of Heisman winners, NFL first-round draft picks and national titles.
• Georgia, led by Smart, who worked for Saban LSUAlabama and even the Miami Dolphins, totaling 11 seasons during which he collected four nappies.
, oregonLed by Dan Lanning, who served as a graduate assistant under Saban at Bama during the 2015 national title before taking the full-time assistant job. memphis And then connecting with Smart in Georgia.
, ole missUnder the leadership of Pete Golding, who served as a defensive coach under the famously defense-obsessed Saban for five years, including the 2020 national championship season, before leaving to join the staff at Ole Miss. He was hired there by another former Saban assistant, Lane Kiffin. Now Golding will make his head coaching debut at CFP, thrust into that role following Kiffin’s less-than-smooth departure for LSU.
• And finally, miamiCoached by Mario Cristobal, whom Saban hired at Alabama in 2013 after losing his head coaching job. Florida InternationalCristóbal oversaw the offensive line, holding the position of assistant head coach, but like Cignetti, he had his greatest influence in the role of recruiting coordinator, When Cristobal left Tuscaloosa at the end of the 2016 season, he did so with four SEC titles and a 2015 national championship ring,
Near-CFP List:
• 13th place texasThe first team to miss the playoffs was led by Steve Sarkisian, who like Kiffin and Cristobal is a graduate of Nick Saban’s head coach rehabilitation and career rejuvenation program. Amid personal struggles with addiction and professional struggles as USC’s head coach, Sark was brought to Bama by Saban as an offensive assistant in 2016 and again from 2019 to 2020. Together, they won a pair of SEC titles and the 2020 Nationals before Sarkisian left for Austin.
• 25th position georgia techJoe remained in the ACC title fight all season and nearly upset Georgia in rivalry week under the leadership of Brent Key. Key was Saban’s offensive line coach for three seasons, including the 2017 season.
Some of the rest (always subject to change as this phenomenal coaching carousel-turned-gravitron keeps spinning):
• Chief Applewhite, south alabama
• Scott Cochrane, west alabama
• Charles Huff, southern miss
• Lane Kiffin, LSU
• Bill O’Brien, boston college
• Butch Jones, arkansas state
• Charles Kelly, jacksonville state
• Mike Locksley, maryland
• Alex Mortensen, uab
• Lance Taylor, western michigan
“I think if you talk to any of us who worked on Nick’s staff, we all have a list of coaches who have influenced us and served as mentors,” O’Brien said in July. O’Brien’s career includes seven years as head coach of the Houston Texans, five years as an offensive coach in the high holy days of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots and two years as Saban’s offensive coordinator in 2021 and ’22.
“The question is, what did you take away from someone? How did they change you? I’ve been an NFL head coach and head coach.” penn state In truly challenging times. But they showed me organization at a level I had never experienced before, from practice to how you run a meeting and deal with outside obligations. I think anyone who’s spent time with him will tell you that.”
They really do. Every Saban intern we talked to about the topic this season certainly did. But no one talked about plans or any plans for a football attack. Instead, each discussion with the seven-time national champion about his lessons focused on process and details. Not how to deal with ball carriers, but how to deal with problems players come into his office.
Lanning said, “I worked for him for a year, that’s all, but he cheated on me in just about every possible situation you can think of.” “No matter what the question is to him, his answer is like a teacher’s lesson. ‘Dan, when I was faced with this, these were the three things I did…’ He always has that answer. He’s a leader.”
As for Saban himself, the master of details is well aware of his impact, even if he tries to avoid conversation about it.
“I’m not a tree expert, but I know you can’t grow a tree unless you have something from another tree. Pine cones or something. Wherever the seeds come from they have to come from somewhere else,” he said earlier this autumn, when his pupils and their teams took six spots in the AP Top 10, not to mention Alabama, which is not led by a former Saban employee but is housed in a building where He still has an office. “For me, that was Don James. I played for Coach James at Kent State. This is George Pearls. I learned under him at Michigan State. He learned from guys like Bump Elliott and Chuck Noll. And They Learned from people like Paul Brown. You know who those people are, right?”
Sure. James, national championship coach and College Football Hall of Famer. Pearls, Rose Bowl winner, two-time Big Ten champion, godfather of Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defense. Noll, the four-time Super Bowl-winning coach of those Steelers. Elliott, Big Ten champion, Michigan coach and renowned Iowa athletic director. High school teammate of Paul Brown, a member of the famous Notre Dame Four Horsemen and, yes, almost the inventor of modern football. A man whose attention to detail made Saban look downright sloppy. Brown once got the future Pro Football Hall of Famer to burp during a team meeting.
Saban linking his coaching responsibilities to the greatest coaching gurus of a century ago is no accident. It’s like “Hey, who have you trained with?” Is a goat-level version of. The game is played by the same man who stands right in the middle of that endless coaching tree, connecting the branches of today with the branches of the past.
“As much as football and the business of football have evolved, the fundamentals of coaching are still at the same level as they’ve always been,” Sequoia said. “It’s our job to take what we’ve learned, figure out how it translates to work today and then make sure that the next generation that’s learning it from us is prepared to teach it to the people who work for them.”
