The Shadow of Nick Saban: Impact on SEC Football Dynamics

We were talking a little bit about the SEC earlier, Bill. I mean, we're in like the post-Nick Saban SEC era right now. Does that feel like, is it lost some of the steam, we think, because of no Nick Saban, who is arguably the greatest, or most successful, whatever you want to say, college football coach of all time? I would say yes. I mean, I covered plenty of SEC media days with Nick Saban, and I always made the comment that when he talked, it was typically Wednesday. Nick Saban would come on. They wouldn't bring Nick Saban out there on Monday, or Tuesday. They would bring him, it's a four-day event, you bring him out on Wednesday. It felt like a little bit of Alabama football, and a little bit of the state of the union of college football. That's how much pull he had at the time. I mean, I remember walking into the Winfrey Hotel, and trying to get in the hotel, and it was like eight in the morning, and there are just, I'm not exaggerating, at least 100 Alabama fans outside the doors. You know, some of them wearing the elephant hats, and stuff, waiting just to catch a glimpse at Nick Saban, and they would scream, you know, 17 or 18. They wanted that next national title. It was a wild scene, and at Big Ten Media Day, it's never been quite like that. They do make it a fan experience. I'm not saying like Urban Meyer, or Brian Day, or Kurt Cignetti, or any of those coaches don't have the same presence, but it was a little bit of a different feel with Nick Saban. Do you feel kind of that centralized figure being done with college football? Because you look at the Big Ten, everyone's kind of sharing a piece of the pie as far as national championships. Do you feel like that head coach, like in Nick Saban, who they're going out, they're winning five national championships in a decade. Do you think that's done where that's like, you're just not going to see Guy have that dominance anymore just with the transfer portal, NIL? Like, I don't, I don't see that happening. I'll see Nick Saban coming around, I guess, for the rest of college football. Well, maybe it feels a little bit like the 90s then. You know, where, not to go back to, all the way back to in time, but at that time, you had Bobby Bowden, you had Steve Spurrier, you had Tom Osborne. I mean, the larger-than-life personalities of that era, it was still spread out. I mean, Nebraska won three, you know, Bobby Bowden won, I think, two or three, right? And Spurrier won the one at Florida. But I kind of feel like that's the playing field we have now. Now, Kirby's won two, and Dabo's won two. Kirby, however, his media presence is one of like a former defensive coordinator that is a bit more out of obligation than want to, if that makes sense. Like, he's not bad, and he's not rude to reporters or anything like that, but there's definitely a feel of, man, I gotta go do this now. And he just wants to get it done and get back to film. Brian Day, Steve Sarkeesian, Marcus Freeman, those are all coaches that are, you know, in that neighborhood, but you're dealing with a sport where there aren't a lot of active coaches with national titles. So next week at Big Ten Media Day, I think it'll be interesting to see what's the difference between Ryan Day and, you know, Kurt Cignetti. You know, those are two different personalities as well, both very successful coaches, but very different personalities, especially when it comes to the media.