University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Saturday, May 18. Honored at a banquet at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, Saban became the latest in a long line of great Crimson Tide sports figures to be enshrined in the ASHOF.
He arrived at the University in 2007 and resurrected the Crimson Tide football program back into the national spotlight in the 2008 season. He won his first BCS National Championship at Alabama in 2009 and recently claimed back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012, something almost no other coach has done in their career.
“When you’re growing up as a kid, you always want to be able to do something of significance,” Saban said. “You hope that you can do something that affects people in a positive way and you leave some legacy at what you’ve done. Things like this make you realize that maybe you’ve done that, that your work has been recognized and that all the miles you drove in recruiting and all the family sacrifices that everybody had to make … it somehow makes you realize that it’s all worthwhile.”
In his past eight years of coaching college football, Saban has won four national championships, with one coming in 2003 while he was at the helms at LSU. He has compiled a 154-55-1 (.737) record as a collegiate head coach, with a 61-7 (.897) record in the past five years.
Saban was one of eight members elected in the hall in the class of 2013. The group included Ronnie Baynes (SEC and NFL official), the late Forrest Blue (Auburn center), Eric Davis (Jacksonville State football player), the late Bill Jones (North Alabama basketball coach), Bill Oliver (defensive coach at Alabama and Auburn), Vickie Orr (Auburn basketball) and Dannette Young State (Alabama A&M track and field).
“Anytime you get recognized with such a prestigious group of people that have been inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, it’s a tremendous honor,” Saban said.
Saban is entering his seventh season at the University this fall. He is a five-time National Coach of the Year. He is also one of only four coaches in the modern-poll era of college football to win four national championships, joining Paul “Bear” Bryant (Alabama: 1961, 64-65, 73, 78-79), Frank Leahy (Notre Dame: 1943, 46-47, 49) and John McKay (USC: 1962, 67, 72, 74).
He is also one of three coaches in the poll era to win three national titles in a four-year span, joining Leahy and Nebraska’s Tom Osborne.
Saban was quick to point out who was missing in the crowd. The late Mal Moore was a very important figure in Saban’s recruitment to the University and a mentor to the successful coach.
“The one regret that I have is the man who is responsible for me being at The University of Alabama and having maybe the greatest coaching job in the world, who was my partner in all the success that we had over the last six years, Mal Moore, is not here to be a part of this with us tonight,” Saban said. “And that makes me very very sad because I have a tremendous amount of respect for a genuine human being and a great man … The University of Alabama was everything to him.”
