How Saban Turned The Tide

By the Wall Street Journal:

With all due respect to the 123 other schools that play major-college football, the sport's foreseeable future boils down to one question: Can anyone stop Alabama?

The Alabama Crimson Tide, college football's defending national champion, has become the game's "it" team, an all-powerful and impervious Death Star of a program. Alabama has won two of the last three national titles. Its coach, Nick Saban, won another one while he was at Louisiana State—meaning he has won the title in three of the past seven college seasons he has coached.

The Tide is a 14-point favorite Saturday over No. 8 Michigan—repeat: a two-touchdown favorite against a top-10 team—in its season opener. The last time Alabama was an underdog was 28 games ago, against Tim Tebow and Florida in the 2009 Southeastern Conference championship game.

Result: Bama 32, Florida 13.

The stunning volume of victories and championships and NFL draft picks has Alabama redefining college-football success as we know it. How, exactly, does the Tide do it?

Recruiting is paramount. Saban sets aside time every day for assistant coaches to make phone calls, write letters and discuss the country's best blue-chippers. His system focuses on collecting reliable, exhaustive information on players—not always easy to find when NCAA rules forbid coaches from measuring players' vertical leaps or timing them in the 40-yard dash.

To make up for those restrictions, Alabama's coaching staff is as strict as any in the country about gathering information, recruiting experts say. Crimson Tide coaches consult track times and encourage prospects to add the sport in the football off-season. Coaches invite prospects to attend Alabama's summer camp, since they tend to offer scholarships to high-schoolers they have seen in person and not just on highlights.

And before Alabama recruits a player in earnest, coaches produce a comprehensive report on everything from whether he fits their preferred physical prototypes—a cornerback should be about 6 feet and 185-190 pounds—to his ankle, knee and hip movement. If a lineman's heels are raised when he is crouched in a stance, he is probably too inflexible for Alabama.

Finally, coaches talk to family, friends and others to go "seven-deep into a guy's life" to gauge his mental strength, said former Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain, who is now the head coach at Colorado State.

Saban also embraces technology for his multipronged pitch. He started using videoconferencing as a recruiting tool several years ago—early enough in the software's life that some players spoke to him using equipment at their local libraries. CoachSaban.net, Saban's website, plays a Crimson Tide-themed hip-hop song called "4th Quarter" from the Tuscaloosa group 63 Boyz that features the lyric, "Since we landed Saban in T-Town, it's hard to go unnoticed."

Even Saban's current players are foot soldiers in college football's recruiting war. Cooper Bateman, a top-ranked quarterback from Utah, took a tour of SEC schools in the spring before he committed to Alabama. What stood out to his family during his visit? All of Alabama's players made sure they took off their hats when meeting his mother.

The allure of Alabama, of course, isn't just Southern charm. "In no way for the players who may end up playing in the NFL do I want to limit their exposure or opportunity to do that," Saban said in response to emailed questions.

Since Saban's arrival in 2007, Alabama has produced 11 first-round NFL draft picks, by far the most in the country. Since 2003, only four colleges have churned out more first-rounders than Alabama has since 2009. Three of those programs—Miami, Ohio State and Southern California—have had NCAA rules-related scandals. The fourth school is LSU, which Saban coached from 2000 to 2004. He signed nine of the Tigers' 12 first-round draft picks.

While some programs limit access for NFL scouts, Saban rolls out the crimson carpet for them. "I've always said you could call Alabama and say, 'The only time I can come to Tuscaloosa is at 3 a.m.,' and they would let you in," said Phil Savage, an analyst for Alabama's radio network and the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns.

Saban is the rare college head coach who returned to the NCAA from the NFL of his own volition. Previously the coach at Michigan State and LSU, he worked as the Browns' defensive coordinator with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick in the 1990s, and he was the Miami Dolphins' coach in 2005 and 2006. Alabama's playing style reflects Saban's experience: The Crimson Tide's pro-style offense and defense contrast with more gimmicky college schemes. "So once they get there, it's not like a shock," McElwain said.

The son of a service station and Dairy Queen franchise owner—the coach likes banana milkshakes—Saban, 60, once aspired to own a car dealership. "I can hear the jokes right now," he wrote in "How Good Do You Want to Be?", his 2004 book. But recruiting specialists and Saban's former stars say he is less of a used-car salesman in a recruit's living room than his peers.

"He's incredibly honest in the recruiting process," said former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy, the starter on the 2009 national-title team who now plays for the New York Jets. "He tells kids, 'Hey, you're going to come in and redshirt. Look, you're going to do this. You're going to do that.' He tells them exactly what he thinks. I think a lot of people respect that because so much of the recruiting process is an unknown."

Alabama is what Scott Kennedy, director of scouting for the recruiting site Scout.com, calls "a team of exceptions." As a high-school senior in 2007, for example, Mark Barron was a 6-foot-2, roughly 210-pound running back and linebacker. Not at Alabama. Baron played safety, where he became a first-team All-American and the No. 7 overall pick in April.

It all adds up to the most basic reason Alabama boasts two of the last three titles: Saban has the pick of the recruiting litter. In short, he gets freaks and makes them even scarier.

In recent years, college football's rule-makers have targeted recruiting strategies employed by Alabama. In 2008, the NCAA banned head coaches from making off-campus recruiting visits during the six-week-long spring evaluation period. The concept was to prevent coaches from "bumping into" recruits while observing them, and some dubbed it the Saban rule because of his frequent recruiting travel.

Last year, the SEC capped the number of players a program can sign at 25 per year. That curbed the practice known as "oversigning"—signing more than the annual NCAA maximum of 25 players that programs can admit, giving them a larger pool from which to build a team.

Nevertheless, Alabama keeps winning. Its momentum has turned it into college football's premier program, a title once held by Southern California under Pete Carroll, and then Florida under Urban Meyer. As long as Saban sticks around, he shows no signs of relinquishing it. He said after his two-year stint with the Dolphins that the field-leveling nature of the NFL made it difficult to gain a competitive advantage.

And with an annual compensation of $5.3 million, the highest in the sport, Saban shows no signs of leaving. "I am very happy with the position that I am in right now," he said.