Alabama Football: Why Nick Saban Is the Best CFB Coach in the Last 30 Years

In the past 30 years, there are few coaches that have done what Alabama coach Nick Saban has done in over the course of his 16-season coaching career spanning across multiple programs throughout the country.

With the accomplishments at the many stops during his career, Nick Saban is the best coach in college football over the past three decades and few can rival his success on the football field.

Saban’s head coaching career started with Toledo and took the team to a 9-2 record and a share of the Mid-American Conference title in his first season with the Rockets, but left the program after one season.

After a brief one-season stint in the NFL as defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns, Saban came back to college football for a five-season run as the coach of the Michigan State Spartans and took the NCAA sanctioned program to three straight bowl appearances to start his career in East Lansing.

The Saban era in Green and White ended unceremoniously as he left the program before the 1999 Citrus Bowl and moved on to the Bayou Bengals of LSU.

The five seasons that Saban manned the sidelines in Baton Rouge, starting in 2000, ushered in a rebirth of the LSU program that seemed to be stuck in neutral for the better part of the decade.

The Tigers went 48-16 in those five seasons, capturing two SEC championships in addition to winning the program’s first national title since1958 in Baton Rouge.

After another trip to the NFL, this time as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Saban returned to college football for a second time to, of all teams, the Alabama Crimson Tide, one of LSU’s main rivals in the SEC West.

While the Alabama chapter has yet to be fully written for Saban, in his four-plus seasons in Tuscaloosa the coach has already won three of the four bowl games, including the 2009 BCS National Championship over the Texas Longhorns.

With a boat load of individual awards and players drafted to the NFL, Saban has left a trail of success at every college football program and will continue to rack up wins, awards and titles as his career continues at Alabama.

Is Saban the best coach to grace the sport the past 30 years, or does another coach deserve that honor of the best man to wear the headset?

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