Nick Saban vs. Mark Dantonio Is Perfect College Football Playoff Matchup
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Time and time again the University of Alabama football team has been reminded of something from its past this season.
It repeatedly relived familiar plays (like the pop pass), situations (losing to Ole Miss) and opponents (facing Florida in the SEC Championship Game) as it marched to a second straight league title, and now the same will be true in the playoffs as well.
Sunday morning the selection committee made what most people suspected official when it paired Alabama against Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl and Clemson against Oklahoma at the Orange Bowl.
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Not only will Alabama play another Big Ten opponent in the playoffs, but head coach Nick Saban will again be on the opposing sideline of a team that he used to coach, against one of his former assistant coaches.
Saban was the one who brought Mark Dantonio to East Lansing in 1995 to be his defensive backs coach, and both programs are known for smashmouth football. That makes the matchup so appealing that it’ll be the prime-time game of the two semifinals on December 31 (8 p.m. ET).
"Getting in is one thing, which maybe we were a little too happy with a year ago, but actually doing the things you need to do, the hard work that you need to do to play well in the bowl game because you can’t carry the momentum of the season to December 31—you have to kind of rekindle that momentum that you had," Saban said during the selection show broadcast on ESPN.
"Last year I thought our team thought: 'Well we got into the playoffs, this is a big reward for getting into the playoffs. How come the work is so hard?'"
Both coaches said during their selection show interviews that they hadn't seen much of the other team yet, but Saban was impressed by Michigan State's 22-play drive to beat Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game.
"You know they're going to be very-well coached," Dantonio said later in the broadcast.
They've faced each other just once, the 2011 Capital One Bowl won by Alabama 49-7.
"He was a good coach," Saban said before the 2011 meeting. "He did a great job. He had to put up with me for five years, because whoever coaches the secondary on our team, I'm in the room 90 percent of the time. He did it and managed it better than anything. He had more maturity in doing it than most. So he wasn't a young pup and if he was young he was very mature.
"He's had an outstanding career, did a fantastic job for us. Great person, great recruiter, did a really good job of coaching and developing players and that's continued wherever he's been the coach."
Although reigning Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram Jr. had played his final collegiate game against the school he not only grew up cheering for but numerous family members attended, the Saban coaching tree was the biggest storyline heading into that game.
Not only had Saban coached at Michigan State (before SEC rival LSU), but so had special teams/tight ends coach Bobby Williams, who spent 13 years in East Lansing including three as head coach (2000-2002), along with then-offensive coordinator Jim McElwain and linebackers coach Sal Sunseri.
"I wouldn't be standing here at this podium as the head football coach of Michigan State had I not been hired by Nick, Coach Saban," Dantonio said in 2010. "In five years of coaching at Michigan State with Coach Saban that was probably my biggest learning curve as a secondary coach. I don't want to disrespect anybody I worked for in the past or anything, but you found yourself doing things on a much higher plane of learning technique, etc.
"I learned a great deal."
Of course facing a former assistant coach is nothing new, and on Saturday night Saban improved to 8-0 against them with Alabama's 29-15 victory over Florida and McElwain at the Georgia Dome.
With Kirby Smart named the next head coach at Georgia on Sunday morning and the announcement Will Muschamp has taken the same position at South Carolina, the matchups will likely only increase.
History shows another significant connection between the programs, as Paul W. "Bear" Bryant was good friends with Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty. While their teams were frequently near the top of the rankings, including 1966 when two-time reigning national champion Alabama wasn't awarded a third title despite a perfect record even though Michigan State and Notre Dame played a controversial tie, a meeting on the field never materialized.
This time one of them will be playing for the national championship in Glendale, Arizona, on Jan. 11, and how the teams handle things over the next couple of weeks will go a long way in determining which it'll be.
Alabama is already going about things differently from 2014. Unlike the other three playoff teams, it didn't hold a watch party like last year when the players were told "act like you've been there before" and then looked like they didn't care.
An ESPN reporter said that they had to turn the lights on when they arrived at Alabama's football complex at 5 a.m. A team meeting was scheduled for the afternoon when Saban said his message would be "What do you want to do now?" in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last year's 42-35 loss to Ohio State.
"The first thing we take away from it is we didn't have very much success. We got beat," Saban said. "Maybe we'll do a little bit of a better job this time around at least in preparation. I know we're going to play an outstanding team, but they're all outstanding teams in the playoffs."
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
Christopher Walsh is a lead SEC college football writer. Follow Christopher on Twitter @WritingWalsh.
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