Nick Saban likely doesn't need any validation from his peers in the college football world.
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The Alabama Crimson Tide head coach has won five championships — four with Alabama and one with LSU — and he'll easily go down as one of the best coaches of all-time. Not just in college football, but of all-time.
The results speak for themselves with Saban, which is undoubtedly how he likes it. After all, he expects his players to speak more with their actions on the field than with their words, and his system has worked so far, hasn't it?
With all of that in mind, it isn't surprising that Saban can brush off criticism from fellow coaches. What is a bit surprising, though, is that he apparently agrees with them.
CBS Sports recently did a piece interviewing anonymous head coaches regarding their thoughts on the most underrated and overrated coaches in college football. Perhaps not surprisingly, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh (20-6 at Michigan with a 1-1 bowl record) was voted as the most overrated in the game. The shocker? Behind him with nine percent of the vote was Saban.
The Tide head man took it in stride, though. Recently chatting with Dan Patrick, he took the humble approach to his massive success as a coach:
"First of all, I'd probably agree with that," Saban said on the Dan Patrick Show. "The success that we have is really contributed to by a lot of people. We have really good coaches, we have a really good staff of people who work with the players, we've had a tremendous amount of really, really good players who have made a tremendous commitment to a standard of excellence that has created a lot of success here.
"So, I feel like I get far too much credit for that, and so I would probably tend to agree with whoever voted that way, to be honest with you."
In a sense, Saban is right. Alabama hasn't won as much as it has in the Saban-era because of Saban alone. He's had tremendous assistant coaches around him and, of course, the players have the biggest role in his success.
Still, it's well worth noting that Alabama wouldn't be Alabama without Saban. Would the avalanche of five-star recruits be rolling into Tuscaloosa if Saban wasn't the head coach? Probably not. Could the Tide have won one or two titles with a different head coach? Sure. But four in the past eight years? That's clearly a direct result of Saban being the coach — and recruiter — that he is.
Is Saban overrated?
Some of his peers apparently think so. The results say otherwise, though.
(H/T SEC Country)
