Guerry Clegg: Saban not taking success for granted

The headline on my column almost a year ago read:

Is the Crimson Tide dynasty over?

The column was intended to be neither inflammatory nor prophetic. Rather, it simply raised the question, "Are the best days of the Nick Saban era at Alabama behind us?"

That might seem like a laughable thought now, given that the Crimson Tide are two wins away from winning their fourth national championship in seven seasons. When the regular season and conference championship games ended, no team in college football was playing any better than Alabama. Vegas rates Bama as the favorite to win it all ahead of Clemson, Oklahoma and Michigan State.

So, foolish idea that Saban's best days are behind him, right?

Well, if having a chance to win a national championship suddenly constitutes success at Alabama, then yeah. But when Bama boasts of having 15 national championships, near misses don't count.

This just might be Saban's best chance to win it all. That's not to suggest that the program is on the way down. Rather, it's simply a cautionary reminder that national championships are to be treasured, not taken for granted.

No one understands this better than Saban himself. This is his ninth season at Alabama. Throw out the first year, when he was just trying to change the culture. In the next seven seasons, the Tide won three national championships and came within one win of playing for three others. He's done that with five quarterbacks -- John Parker Wilson, Greg McElroy, AJ McCarron, Blake Sims and now Jake Coker.

Few programs in the history of college football can match that success. Sustaining that level of excellence is almost impossible in this day and age of tighter scholarship limitations and early departure for the NFL.

"I know a day is coming where that standard can't be met," Saban said. "You cannot keep that up. There's going to be some period of time at some point in time where you're not at that level. If you look at every coach's record, it's just not possible to sustain that level of success all the time."

Saban has recruited at a high level every year. But even that is impossible to sustain indefinitely. Last year, Southern Cal beat out Alabama for the top signing class in the country, the first time since 2010 that the Tide didn't finish first in the Rivals.com rankings. Right now, the Tide is in danger of slipping to fourth in the SEC West for 2016 recruiting. They trail Ole Miss and Auburn and are just ahead of LSU. Every year it's going to get a little harder for Saban to recruit against rumors of him retiring before those players' college careers are over.

Again, it's just a matter of time.

So appreciate this team for what it has accomplished. After losing the Ole Miss at home, Alabama was written off by many in the media. This prompted one of Saban's comical rants the Monday after Bama beat Georgia 38-10.

"If it was up to you (the media), we're six foot under already. We're dead and buried and gone -- gone!" Saban said "So if that was the case, we'd have to get some respirators out or something down there to put life back in people."

The win over Georgia began a run of dominance that's impressive even by Saban's standards. The Ole Miss loss helped shape this team.

"The biggest difference in this team and the last two years is this team seems to have a little more want-to about them," Saban said. "They want to be great. Some of our teams here have been complacent, like last year I was disappointed in the way we prepared for the Ohio State game. We had too many people not happy at the Sugar Bowl about having to practice and doing what we had to do. It was a little bit of a grind. These guys don't look at it that way. They're excited to be in the playoff. They're excited to still be playing."

When Alabama meets Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Eve, it will mark the first time in nearly four weeks that either team has played. It's hard to keep momentum going with such a long layoff. Saban has been pleased so far with the players' ability to stay focused during the layoff.

"But until you actually play the game," Saban said, "I don't think you know for sure whether you did that or not."

Of course, beating Michigan State is just the next step. The Tide still would have to beat Oklahoma or Clemson in the championship game.

The Tide has come a long way since that Ole Miss loss. But they still have a long way to go.

-- Guerry Clegg is an independent correspondent. You can write to him at sports@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 10:41 PM with the headline "Guerry Clegg: Saban not taking success for granted ."