Nick Saban did a lot of winning as head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, but he also won a national championship as head coach of the LSU Tigers.
That’s easy to forget because his run at Alabama was so legendary, but he was actually a part of seven college football national championship teams.
Saban won the BCS National Championship at LSU in 2003, and he was the main figure in a run of SEC dominance that spanned the next 20 years.
As mentioned, Saban collected six of those trophies as head coach of the Crimson Tide; in that time frame of 2003 to 2023, the SEC won it all a grand total of 14 times.
In fact, before Michigan won the CFP to end the 2023 season, an SEC team had hoisted the trophy for six of the previous eight seasons.
Michigan’s win was followed by Ohio State, which was then followed by Indiana, so many around college football are suggesting that the Big Ten has now taken the mantle from the SEC as the most dominant conference in college football.
Saban doesn’t want to hear it.
“I think the only reason people are talking about this is (the SEC) dominated for so long, and we were so good, everybody makes a big deal out of being able to beat us,” Saban said on Thursday on the SEC Network (h/t On3). “That doesn’t mean they’re better than us, and that doesn’t mean that just because you win the championship that you have a better conference. It just means you have one better team. We had five teams in the Playoff last year, I think we’ll have that many teams in the Playoff again, and they have to play each other.”
SEC football has been dominant for too long to be outdone by the Big Ten in just a few seasons
The one thing coaches in the SEC have always grumbled about on a national scale is that the conference tends to “cannibalize” itself. Alabama’s 2026 schedule is a good example of that. The Tide must play Georgia, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt this season, and all of those programs are likely to be ranked.
Indiana, in the meantime, has the tough stretch of Ohio State, Michigan, Minnesota, USC and Washington. That’s a gauntlet, but it’s nothing like playing in the SEC.
Indiana’s easiest Big Ten opponents are likely Northwestern, Rutgers and Purdue. In the meantime, Alabama’s easiest SEC opponents are Kentucky and Auburn, and the Tigers are a massive threat to the Tide due to the nature of the Iron Bowl rivalry.
If the Big Ten wins the title again in 2026, and there’s a good chance it does, the calls of Big Ten supremacy will only continue. Saban does have a point, though.
The SEC was the big bad boss for so many seasons that a few good ones from the Big Ten don’t just cancel that time period out.
