Nick Saban stood on the podium at midfield of Sun Life Stadium after winning his fourth BCS National Championship game, his third as coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
ESPN’s John Saunders had finished the trophy presentation, and the crowd roared around them. Saban paused for a brief moment and stared at the crystal football that lay in his hands before raising it triumphantly above his head yet again.
Maybe he finally considered, for just an instant, the magnitude of what he and his team had just accomplished. Maybe he had remembered something important for later as he did after the SEC Championship game when he wrote “Team Dinner” on a piece of paper during the celebration.
Or maybe he saw a spot or blemish on the gleaming crystal trophy. It’s perhaps the most realistic possibility, as Saban has made his living on his ability to find the little imperfections, even in seemingly perfect situations.
Saban, 61, unquestionably entered the pantheon of all-time great college head coaches Monday night. No one has ever been able to accomplish what he has in the BCS era, where winning a championship is harder than ever: four titles at two different schools and now two back-to-back.
Urban Meyer came the closest, winning in 2006 and 2008 with Florida. But Saban’s run stands alone in the modern era.
“When we hired coach Saban,” athletic director Mal Moore said after the game, “He’d won a national championship [at LSU in 2003], and I wanted to him to have the opportunity to do it again at Alabama, and has he ever performed.”
Much is made about Saban’s relentless pursuit of perfection, never letting even the most minute detail go unaddressed. He praised senior center Barrett Jones and junior quarterback AJ McCarron when the pair got in a scuffle about a protection call that forced them to burn a timeout with five minutes remaining in the blowout victory .
“Their reaction to each other was an indication that they’re still out there competing and playing like you’d like for them to,” Saban said Tuesday.
He was also asked Tuesday what he does with his championship rings. Certainly wearing four rings would become a burden after some time.
“I just put them on the coffee table for the recruits to look at,” he said.
That’s Saban in a nutshell. Always thinking about the next game, the next challenge, the next recruit. He sees his championship rings as only a way to woo the next hotshot high school prospect to his university so he can win another.
“Be the best you can be,” he always says. You can almost hear his father drilling that into Nick as he worked at a service station in West Virginia.
“If you’re going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be,” he said. “Sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, like Shakespeare wrote literature. Let them put a sign up right here that says, ‘The best street sweeper in the world lives right here.’
“And if you can do that, you do the best there is in life, knowing you did your best to be the best you could be, no matter what you choose to do.”
You could put a sign in his yard that reads, “The best college football coach in the world lives here,” and you wouldn’t be wrong. Like the Sistine Chapel or Shakespeare’s writing, Saban has left a distinct mark on his profession and will be remembered as an all-time great.
He doesn’t like to pause and think much about it, but Monday he did. Whether he did for a second on that stage, for two hours like he told Tom Rinaldi he would before the game or for 24 hours like he told the media, Saban undoubtedly enjoyed number four.
“Whether I look it or not,” a weary Saban said after the game. “I’m happy as hell.”
And then the moment passed, and it was back to work on number five.
