Alabama Football: Is Nick Saban the Luckiest BCS Era Coach?

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer)

Nick Saban proved he could put together a national championship team at LSU, but he did it with one loss and didn't come close to repeating. The following season his team went 9-3, and barely squeaked out a win over lowly Troy University.

Is he lucky now to be at Alabama where he has an athletic director firmly behind him giving him the nation's top facilities? Or what about a university president that he calls the "Best I've ever worked with" who is not only solidly behind him, but helping him land recruits? Or the nation's most fervent fan base? Or having the "Alabama name and mystique" to help him land top recruits?

While all those things are certainly a reason he won in just his third year at Alabama, old dogs like me were always taught that luck is usually earned, and with a combination of great recruiting and the now famous "process", there was little luck involved.

So were there "Lucky" coaches in the BCS era? Yes, of course.

There were some coaches who truly were in the right place at the right time and walked into, or in one case, backed into a national championship. Let's look at the biggest two.

Larry Coker—University of Miami—2001 Season BCS Champions

The 2001 Miami Football team was arguably one of the best college football teams ever assembled. However, Larry Coker didn't assemble them. Butch Davis did. 

Larry Coker was given the keys to a team that held 22 first round NFL draft choices on it. After those players left, Coker spiraled down along the same rate as the members who left and went on the NFL. He was never able to recruit as Davis had done and was even less capable of developing the ones he did have.

Les Miles—Louisiana State University—2007 Season BCS Champions

Much the same could be said about this man. He was handed a championship caliber team that had been put together and trained by Nick Saban. Still he needed lots of luck to back into the BCS game.

He managed to make it to the big game despite two losses to less than top teams, Kentucky and Arkansas, and was lucky that the number one and two teams both unexpectedly lost their final regular season game thus sending the BCS committee into a frenzy to find a match up for a one loss Ohio State team.

Despite not having a championship type season, there were enough Saban players left who remembered how to win the big ones, and they pulled off the win against a team that was far over rated.

As Saban's players left, so did the fortunes of the LSU tigers. In the last two years without Saban's players, LSU is simply an "average" SEC team with an 8-8 record in the SEC despite great recruiting classes.

Clearly, both Coker and Miles were shown to be the lucky coaches who were simply in the right place at the the right time. Coker lost his job and Miles could be done with another bad season like last year's.

As for Saban, should he win yet another national championship at Alabama, you can take away any talk of luck with last year's two blocked field goals against Tennessee or Colt McCoy's early exit. 

He will simply be known as the best college coach in college football today.

He won at LSU, building a program from the bottom up. He won at Alabama after rebuilding an undisciplined program, and, should he win another one, he will have won with a team of his own building and design. That would make him the first BCS era coach to win three championships.

That's no longer luck, that's simply dominance, that's simply Saban.