Nick Saban is universally regarded as not only a living legend, but the greatest coach of all time. However, with Kirby Smart, Saban’s greatest protege, reeling off back-to-back national championships, one of which was won over Saban’s Alabama program, uncomfortable questions are beginning to be asked. Will Smart one day surpass Saban? Has he already surpassed Saban? Smart the best coach in college football? Is Saban losing his grip? Is Alabama in the last throes of its decade-plus long dynasty?
Inquiring minds want to know.
To accurately answer these questions, we, first off, have to differentiate between most ACCOMPLISHED and BEST. While there can certainly be some overlap between the two concepts, they are also very different things
With 10 SEC championships and a whopping seven national titles on his resume, Saban is indisputably the most accomplished coach in the history of the sport. No contest. Even the drunkest Georgia fan out of the masses of Georgia fans hanging off of light poles and jumping into porta potties in downtown Athens after the Bulldogs’ 65-7 demolition of TCU to win their second-consecutive national title wouldn’t dare argue that King Kirby is a more accomplished coach than Saban. Hell, the guy has won a national title in three different decades. When it comes to hardware, Saban’s got it in the bag.
But, does that necessarily mean that Saban is a BETTER coach than Smart?
Ehhhhhh. I don’t know, man.
When it comes down to it, when we have these debates about who is the “best” coach or the “best” player, we almost invariably default to who has won the most championships. Why? It’s a matter of quantitative vs qualitative data. We lean on championships so heavily in these debates because not only is winning the object of the game, it’s something that can be quantified. It can be distilled down into a tiny package that you can throw in someone’s face to win an argument because you can PROVE that X won more titles than Y did, while the person you are arguing with can’t PROVE that Y is more talented than X.
That’s why Tom Brady is regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time. Is Brady really the most talented or gifted quarterback to ever play the game?
Hell, no.
But I can’t prove that. That’s my opinion. What can be proven, though, is that Brady won more Super Bowls than any other QB to ever play the game. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. There is no arguing with that. It creates a mystique around Brady that people just accept as indisputable fact.
But I would argue that if Aaron Rodgers had been inserted into that situation with that franchise at that time, that he would have won just as many if not more Super Bowls than Brady because he is a more talented quarterback than Brady has ever been.
But we’ll never know for sure. And that opens the door for some poindexter to slide in, push his glasses up on his nose and say “well actually, Brady won more titles, so…”
But that line of thinkings just doesn’t sit right with me
I simply reject the notion that more titles equals better coach or better player. It’s too simplistic and shallow of a way to answer the question of “better.”
When debating “best” or “better” context has to be factored into the equation. I know we don’t like to do that because it clouds the argument and leaves us without that trump card that automatically ends a debate when it’s thrown out there. We like nice, clean debates that have hard and fast answers.
The reality is that Nick Saban at 71 has been a college head coach for 20 more years than Kirby Smart has at 47. With two coaches as great as they both are, of course he is going to have racked up more titles than Smart. Saban’s longevity has certainly been remarkable and the sheer dominance of his Alabama dynasty has no parallel in history, but just saying Saban has won more titles and ending the conversation there isn’t a serious way to go about the debate.
As the great Logan Roy (R.I.P.) would say, if that’s how you want to go about the Saban-Smart debate, “you aren’t serious people.”
“Serious people” are sophisticated enough to look at the bigger picture and include context that might muddy the waters of the debate.
So let’s do it. Let’s muddy the waters.
What Saban has built and accomplished at Alabama is nothing short of incredible. He built an unprecedented championship machine. But, it’s also true that he built that machine in a relative power vacuum in the SEC. There was no Alabama dynasty for him to contend with and overcome as he climbed to the top of the college football world. Sure, Urban Meyer was at Florida when Saban got there, but after the “health scare” following the 2009 season, Meyer was on his way out. And once Urban left, the SEC was ripe for conquest and Saban accordingly took advantage.
Smart, on the other hand, did not have the luxury of taking advantage of a power vacuum when he took the Georgia job. Quite the contrary. Smart has had to conquer the greatest dynasty in the history of the sport at the height of its powers on his ascent to the top of the college football landscape. He built a bigger and better Death Star when the original Death Star was already fully built-out and operational. Imagine if the Rebel Alliance had been able to build a better, more powerful version of the Death Star while the Empire was fully aware of what it was doing and exerted all of its mighty power to stop it from happening. That’s what Smart has done in his first seven years at Georgia.
And Smart did it without any previous experience to fall back on. Let’s not forget that Nick Saban did not become NICK SABAN until he got to Alabama. Yeah, he was very well respected based on what he did at LSU, but he was absolutely not considered the greatest college football coach of all time prior to taking the Alabama job after he spent months telling everybody that there was no way in hell he was going to take the Alabama job. Saban had 11 years of college coaching experience and two seasons of NFL head coaching experience before he took the Alabama job and built the greatest dynasty the sport has ever seen. He built it, but it took him time to get there.
Smart on the other hand, had zero head coaching experience before taking the Georgia job. He scuffled to an 8-5 record in his first season before launching the Bulldogs into the national championship game in year two. It took the man two years to get his program into a national championship game and only six years to win his first national title. Conversely, it took Saban nine years to win his first national championship at LSU and it took him 14 years as a college coach to win two national titles, a feat Smart accomplished in half that time.
For all the qualitative geeks out there, sure Smart is only 1-4 in head-to-head matchups with Saban to this point in his career, but the Georgia head coach has also compiled an 81-15 overall record in his first seven years as a head man, while Saban only managed a 54-30-1 record in his first seven seasons as a college head coach between Toledo, Michigan State, and LSU. Even if you want to directly compare their respective build-outs of Georgia and Alabama, Smart’s 81-15 record over his first seven years at Georgia is still superior to Saban’s 79-21 record in his first seven seasons at Alabama. Under Smart’s leadership, Georgia also finished the 2022 season with an 15-0 record, something Nick Saban has still yet to do.
And, again, Smart’s accomplishments are made all the more impressive by the fact that he had to contend with Alabama every step of the way. When Saban was establishing his dynasty in Tuscaloosa, there was no other dynasty to compete with and overcome. Sure, Florida was good for a few years and LSU had some good teams, but neither of those programs ever approached what Alabama has become.
Does all of that make Smart a better coach than Saban?
Not necessarily. But it absolutely does mean that Smart’s first seven years as a head coach were considerably more successful than Saban’s first seven years. Even to those who are slaves to the numbers, that is as indisputable as the fact that Saban is currently the most accomplished coach in the history of the sport. But more than that, it means that, at the very least, Smart has launched himself on a trajectory to one day win more titles than Saint Nick and stake his claim as both the undisputed best and most accomplished coach in the history of the sport.