You had to see it to believe it, but it happened. The ESPN cameras caught the rarest of rares: an in-game Nick Saban smile.
It occurred as the Alabama coach was marching down the sidelines following a successful, surprise on-side kick in Monday's College Football National Championship, a trick play with 10:34 remaining that proved to be a pivotal turning point. For once, the coach abandoned script and gambled, and it worked.
Saban’s Crimson Tide would go on to beat Clemson 45-40. Alabama fans, though used to this sort of thing, were happy. The rest of college football fans, also used to this sort of thing, collectively groaned. Alabama won again? Saban, the consumate winner, won again? Boring.
Confetti falling all around him and broad smiles across his players’ faces, Saban looked bored during an after-game ESPN interview.
“We didn’t play our best game tonight”, he said, shaking his head. Alabama fans laugh at their leader’s precociousness, the other college football fans roll their eyes at their enemy’s pretentiousness. And with a sigh, it is on to next season.
Read more: Onside kick 'changed the momentum' as Alabama beat Clemson for NCAA football national title
Feelings aside, the national championship is Saban’s again. It’s his fifth as a collegiate head coach and his fourth with Alabama in seven seasons. It is sheer dominance in the face of a deeper talent pool and level of competition than the sport has ever seen. Still, Saban dominates.
But that fleeting smile from Monday night is long gone. There’s recruiting and next season to think about. He cannot be bothered with one little win.
I actually worry about the man. He is perhaps the greatest American football coach ever. Not just college football, but at any level. Only Crimson Tide coach Paul Bryant — the man to who all Alabama and college coaches are compared, can match Saban’s college accomplishments.
At the pro level — where Saban was in charge for a forgettable two seasons with the Miami Dolphins — one could perhaps argue the virtues of Don Shula, Vince Lombardi or Bill Belichick as the sport’s standard.
But I would take Saban over all of them. For his steely resolve, for his ability to recognise talent and put it to its optimal use, for his never-ending crusade against trivial aspects of the game such as “joy” and “fun”, he is everything you want in a football coach.
Photo gallery: Instant classic – Alabama top Clemson in College Football Playoff championship
Yet I worry about him. Or maybe I worry about what the look on his face means for the rest of us.
How can someone so successful be so outwardly indifferent? When is it enough? If his measure of success doesn’t equate to contentment, what hope do the rest of us have at happiness? If excellence is not bliss, what is?
At least Alabama fans are happy again, though sometimes their notorious fickleness gets the best of Saban.
His name is often floated with other top jobs across the country, and Tide fans’ thirst for national championships (of which they now claim 16, far more than any other school) could drive the sanest man out of his mind.
Luckily for them, Saban might not be sane. How else to explain such an overt lack of pleasure?
He will go down as one of the greats if not the absolute greatest, and history will remember him with much more fondness than he shows himself.
American football’s past is often celebrated with a revery typically reserved for America’s greatest champions and heroes.
The sport’s future, on the other hand, is fairly bleak, with player safety a genuine existential concern.
It is in the sport’s present where Saban lives and thrives. And sometimes that present — knowing what issues are coming one day for many of these players — is hard to watch. It is a machine-like game and a thankless, capitalist, industrial-like business.
The NFL punishes any personality out of its players, and the NCAA makes billions off of scholarship athletes who sometimes cannot afford their own suppers.
And standing tall atop of the industry is Saban: a prototypical chief executive-type, a man who cannot be bothered to rest on his laurels or celebrate his victories.
There is always next season, just like in American capitalism, where any profits only mean next year’s should be higher.
It only makes sense that the restless Saban is the perfect embodiment of modern American football.
Still, it is worth repeating. Nick Saban smiled. He even let a couple slip after the game was over, if only for a few seconds. Maybe there’s joy to be had in football yet.
kjeffers@thenational.ae
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