New details on Saban's retirement cloud the future of an old-school approach

Matt Rhule seems to be building Nebraska with an approach that has always worked. How does it work, however, when college football is in the midst of drastic change?

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Let’s quickly try to summarize the impact of Nick Saban’s retirement at Alabama:

1. The gold standard program for college football success over the past decade-plus has to find a new coach, and this isn’t the standard “replacing a legend” challenge, it’s replacing the guy widely considered the best to ever do it. Additionally, in a thoroughly modern twist, approximately 20% of the roster, one of the two or three most talented rosters in the country, will leave as a result of this news. Kalen DeBoer is probably about as good a hire as Alabama could’ve made, but any change represents uncertainty where once there was certainty and every program with championship aspirations recognizes this window of opportunity.

2. Alabama chooses DeBoer, Washington’s head coach, which effectively pauses the upward trajectory the Husky program was on just as it prepares for the big jump to the Big Ten. More uncertainty from relative certainty.

3. Washington chooses Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch, which effectively pauses the upward trajectory the Wildcat program was on just as it prepares to move to the Big 12, which, unlike the Big Ten, feels like a conference of unclaimed land due to its lack of blue-blood powers. Maybe Arizona could’ve been the best team in the new Big 12, maybe it still will be. I don’t know. It would’ve been among the conference favorites entering 2024 after a 10-3 season in 2023. Instead, more uncertainty from relative certainty.

4. Arizona’s hire is where we know we’re post-Sabanquake and into aftershock territory because the Wildcats make a fairly conventional hire of Brent Brennan. The head coach at San Jose State for the previous seven seasons and a UA alum, Brennan is a fairly conventional hire. He was 34-48 with the Spartans, but won two conference titles, so he has the classic G5-ascendant profile we see all the time in this sport. Arizona reportedly almost hired him in 2021, when it opted for Fisch instead.

5. San Jose State goes somewhat outside the box—smartly, in my opinion—and taps Ken Niumatalolo. The former Navy head coach was fired in 2022 and had basically a bridge job at UCLA last season. His time with the Midshipmen proved he was a good head coach (109-83 career record), but he’s from the option-football school, which isn’t very trendy these days and probably pigeonholed Niumatalolo over the past few hiring cycles. San Jose State wasn’t a certainty under Brennan, but now anyone who bothers to check in on the Spartans has to wonder about how good Niumatalolo is given they probably won’t run the option.

I’m laying this all out because a) I’m somewhat obsessed with this sport, and b) Chris Low of ESPN gave readers their first real story on the inner workings during this tumultuous time for Alabama football. That story had me thinking about Saban’s decision and its impact on Nebraska football.

There are a lot of thought-provoking bits to Low’s story from a broader college football perspective, but the following passage specifically resonated with me when considering Nebraska football in 2024.

To set it up, Saban told Alabama AD Greg Byrne—the son of former Nebraska AD Bill Byrne—that he needed to reevaluate his future on a year-to-year basis after the 2022 season. Byrne did what a good AD would do and started preparing immediately for a retirement that could come at any time.

After an uncharacteristically slow start to 2023, Alabama kept getting better, beating Georgia in the SEC Championship Game to land a spot, controversially, in the College Football Playoff. It was after losing to Michigan in overtime in the CFP Semifinal in the Rose Bowl, and his players’ reaction to that loss, that Saban started to seriously think about his future.

From ESPN:

“I want to be clear that wasn't the reason, but some of those events certainly contributed,” Saban said of his decision to retire. “I was really disappointed in the way that the players acted after the game. You gotta win with class. You gotta lose with class. We had our opportunities to win the game and we didn't do it, and then showing your ass and being frustrated and throwing helmets and doing that stuff ... that's not who we are and what we've promoted in our program.”

Once back in Tuscaloosa, as Saban began meeting with players, it became even more apparent to him that his message wasn't resonating like it once did.

“I thought we could have a hell of a team next year, and then maybe 70 or 80 percent of the players you talk to, all they want to know is two things: What assurances do I have that I'm going to play because they're thinking about transferring, and how much are you going to pay me?” Saban recounted. “Our program here was always built on how much value can we create for your future and your personal development, academic success in graduating and developing an NFL career on the field.

“So I'm saying to myself, 'Maybe this doesn't work anymore, that the goals and aspirations are just different and that it's all about how much money can I make as a college player?' I'm not saying that's bad. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that's never been what we were all about, and it's not why we had success through the years.”

I quote all of that because it struck me as fairly similar to how I think Rhule wants to continue building at Nebraska. He did, after all, say in December that NU had its “own portal,” an accurate appraisal then of how few players the Huskers had added via the transfer portal because of how few players it had lost. They would go on to add a few more transfers—addressing some key needs and winning “roster season,” in my own words—but this Alabama story at ESPN made me consider the sustainability of that approach.

Every successful coach, and Rhule is one of those, would probably prefer the way college football used to be, though it would be close to a death sentence to say it. It was always a tough game, turning the roster over every four years, but if you found a recruiting rhythm you could do it. Kirby Smart is doing it at Georgia. Saban did it at Alabama, but even he was starting to feel the ground shake. Combine that with his age, which he acknowledges in the ESPN piece, and Saban had a fairly natural questions to ask, a question we all get to ask at some point: Am I up for this?

Saban’s example is a good, if skewed, example. He decided, and you can do this if you’re financially fine and feel you have nothing left to prove, that he didn’t want to be up for it.

Rhule, as Nebraska’s current head coach, would have a harder time reaching the same conclusion. He is, presumably, in a good spot financially, but he’s entering year two in the biggest college job he’s had. Rhule is still building this Husker program in a way that was successful at other programs, which is what Nebraska hired him to do.

But it was successful in a different era of college football. If Saban is feeling worn out by the realities of roster maintenance after making a somewhat improbable run to the playoff, what are any program’s chances of doing things the old-school way given we know less than ever about college football’s future?

None of this impacts Nebraska’s immediate future. That’s part of the reason why I’m already on record this offseason trumpeting the huge opportunity ahead this offseason. The Huskers have a window here where, a) they’ve had the luxury of using the transfer portal selectively, b) are in decent standing when it comes to NIL money, and c) have gotten enough players to ignore how college football actually works today.

That last item, I think, diminishes the most quickly based on the success a program has. Rhule is still selling that the future is unlimited at Nebraska, and, for now, it is. If that success comes, however, how unlimited is it?

That’s the question this Saban retirement story makes me ask. Smart will probably be fine at Georgia. He established enough of the old-world machine to keep on winning there as long as he wants. Beyond that, remaining mostly transfer- and NIL-independent, which I think is Rhule’s preferred course, seems extremely difficult. If Saban decided he wasn’t up for it, I wonder how many current and former head coaches are.

Does today’s game require a coach completely divorced from how things used to work? I don’t know, but there’s enough upheaval still in front of us that I’d be somewhat hesitant, if I were an AD, to jump on a completely old-school approach.

That wasn’t the case when Trev Alberts hired Rhule a little over a year ago. Maybe it wouldn’t be the case if he hired Rhule today given that Nebraska needed, and still needs, to just get back to a basic level of winning that befits the advantages it has earned as an all-time, top-10 program. Maybe considering the possible roadblock that’s miles down the road ignores that Nebraska hasn’t cleared its current roadblock yet.

I guess that’s the long tail of Saban’s retirement for me, a person whose frame of reference is Nebraska. I think Rhule is building things the right way in Lincoln. I think he’s doing it in a way that has always worked.

The question is if the game has already changed so much that the way that has always worked no longer does. Nobody knows the answer right now. If I had to guess, I’d guess no, there are elemental aspects of coaching and leadership that will matter no matter how the rules change.

But Saban cashed in his chips, which he’d more than earned the right to do, and that makes me wonder. After winning his first national title at Alabama in 2009, he was able to pitch to every Tide recruit that every player he signed who stuck it out for four years was part of a national-title team. Even that was apparently losing its appeal in this currently murky period for college football.

It doesn’t make me question Nebraska’s present under Rhule, but it does make me wonder if college football hasn’t already changed enough that the next coaching legend isn’t someone who is unburdened by “well, we used to do it this way.”