In the immortal words of one of my favorites, George Harrison, "Sunrise doesn't last all morning. A cloudburst doesn't last all day...Sunset doesn't last all evening. A mind can blow those clouds away...All things must pass. All things must pass away."
I am almost 100% certain that Harrison wasn't talking about football, but this is the song that is playing in my head this morning. If the rumors are true, we will have witnessed in the last 24 hours, the end of two eras, if you will. University of Alabama Head Football Coach Nick Saban announced yesterday that he has officially retired after 17 seasons there. He leaves a legacy that will never be matched again in my lifetime and probably in no other lifetime. Seven National Championships (six of those at Alabama, all occurring in 12 seasons), 11 SEC Championships, the first coach in NCAA history to win two National Championships at two different schools (LSU and Alabama - this record has since been matched), and a career college football head coaching record of 292-71-1. He coached four Heisman Trophy winners (Mark Ingram II, Derrick Henry, DeVonta Smith, and Bryce Young) and an all-time record 49 First-Round NFL draft picks. His head coaching tree is long and distinguished. He is a devout Catholic, a pillar in the community of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and keeps in contact and continues to mentor his former players long after they graduate. There were no specific reasons cited for retirement, but Saban did have this to say, "It is not just about how many games we won and lost, but it’s about the legacy and how we went about it. We always tried to do it the right way. The goal was always to help players create more value for their future, be the best player they could be and be more successful in life because they were part of the program. Hopefully, we have done that, and we will always consider Alabama our home."
One of our daughters attended Alabama during a four-year stretch in which Saban won two of his six National Championships (they were Runners-Up the other two years), so I have watched the program with great interest ever since. I have posted about his leadership philosophy on a number of occasions (see "Roll Tide!", "The Process", "The half-time rally", and most recently, "Practice makes perfect"). He is universally acclaimed as one of the greatest college football coaches of all-time, and I would put him on my "Mount Rushmore" of the greatest college coaches with UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden, Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summit, and Grambling State men's football coach Eddie Robinson. I will certainly miss watching him coach, but more importantly, I will miss posting about his leadership philosophy and approach to the game.
Saban is apparently good friends with another legendary football coach who is apparently leaving his current head coaching job with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick. Coach Belichick holds the record for the most Super Bowl wins as a coach (eight - two of which he won as Defensive Coordinator with the New York Giants) and the most Super Bowl wins as a head coach (six - all with the Patriots). He is just 14 wins shy of surpassing Don Shula's record for all-time wins in the NFL, and despite his most recent lack of success, he will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the all-time greats, if not the greatest, NFL head football coaches. While he is not an easy coach to like, and he certainly had the advantage of playing with the greatest NFL quarterback of all-time, I have also posted a number of times about the dynasty he helped create with the Patriots (see "The Patriot Way", "The Patriot Way Redux", and "That makes it twice...").
I have been really fortunate to witness these great coaches in their prime and during my lifetime. I will miss writing about them, and I will definitely miss watching their success (well, at least with Coach Saban and not really with Coach Belichick, because I really don't like the Patriots). It's perhaps poignant that both coaches are ending their respective careers, at least with the teams where they had their most success (there are rumors that Belichick will coach somewhere else), at the same time and in the same 24-hour period. We knew their time would eventually come to an end, because "All Things Must Pass".
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