February 22, 2025

Most people agree that Nick Saban is the best college football coach of all time. He was the most successful head coach in the history of the sport, having won seven national titles. In his 17 years in Alabama, he won six of them championships. The first of his career, but the eighth, occurred at LSU. Even with this disparity, Saban feels bad about leaving Baton Rouge.

The Pivot podcast was where Saban made his admission. When asked if there was anything he “wished he had done differently” during his coaching career, Ryan Clark, who was a player for Saban with the Tigers from 2000 to 2001, responded. Saban instantly thought of his 2005 move to the Miami Dolphins from LSU.

This realization sent him back to the NCAA, where he duplicated and outperformed Paul “Bear” Bryant’s gold standard at the same school.

Eventually, Saban delivered on his promise. Miles and Ed Orgeron helped LSU win the titles in 2007 and 2019, so they haven’t been forgotten since Saban. But one of the most important “what if?” questions in college football history will always be what the Tigers and Crimson Tide might have been if Saban had never made the leap to the professional ranks.

Saban returned to the college game in 1995 as the head coach at Michigan State University, where he rebuilt the team over the course of five seasons. Following the 1999–2000 season, when Michigan State finished with a 9–2 record, he resigned and became the head coach at Louisiana State University (LSU). Saban had even more success during his five years at LSU, with five appearances in bowl games. Following a 13–1 campaign during the 2003–04 season, LSU defeated the University of Oklahoma in the BCS national championship (in the Sugar Bowl) to give Saban his first college national title. After spending one more year at LSU, he returned to the professional ranks as the head coach of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. The team had two mediocre seasons, however, marked by numerous personality clashes between Saban and his players, and he left to take over the University of Alabama

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