nick saban 2025 NFF COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME CLASS

nick saban

By Matt Fortuna

Nick Saban planned on following in his family's footsteps. He had worked at his father's service station while growing up, and he planned on going to General Motors school after college, in order to eventually open up his own car dealership. He had it all mapped out, until Don James asked him to stay at Kent State following his playing days to become a graduate assistant.

"I said to him, Well, I don't want to be a coach and I don't want to go to graduate school, so why would I do that?" Saban said. "Miss Terry had another year of school, we were married, and I couldn't really leave. He talked me into the fact that it's good in this profession to have a master's degree, so why don't you go ahead and get your master's degree. Do this, your wife graduates, and you can go do whatever you want.

"I did that and loved the coaching part of it, loved the competition, loved the relationship with the players. So, I became a part-time coach the next year after I got my master's degree, got hired as a full-time coach the next year, and one thing led to another, and next thing I know, 10 years down the road I'm in this profession."

Funny how influential coaches can be. James, whether he knew it or not, ended up launching arguably the greatest college coaching career of all time. Saban is now immortalized as a College Football Hall of Famer, alongside James, who was inducted in 1997.

"I never had a vision that I would ever go be a head coach," Saban said. "I just enjoyed coaching the position and recruiting and all the things that go with it, and always thought that I'll get a real job one of these days. But one thing led to another and opportunities kept coming and I enjoyed it so much, I never really wanted to ever not do it.

"So, I'm very fortunate to fall into a profession that we just absolutely loved being a part of, and the relationships that we were able to build through the years. And the goal was always to impact the players that you were associated with to have a better chance to be more successful in life, which was very positive self-gratification. So that's kind of how it all happened, and pretty much by accident, I guess."

Saban won 11 SEC titles and an FBS-record seven national titles. He became the first coach in the AP poll era to win national titles at two different schools, LSU and Alabama. Saban went 292-71-1 for his career, including a 206-29 mark during his astonishing 17-year run with the Crimson Tide. He coached 52 first-round draft picks during his career. He coached four Heisman Trophy winners with Alabama.

"As we go through life, there's always new horizons," Saban said. "So you're an assistant, you become a coordinator. You go from a coordinator to being a head coach. You're a head coach, have a reasonable amount of success, and then in 2003 win a national championship. I guess each one of those horizons that you meet sort of maybe is a goal that you never knew that you could accomplish, and you do, and when you do, that creates a really good feeling of accomplishment.

"And obviously the ultimate one probably, from a college standpoint, is winning the first championship in 2003 at LSU. But each one of those horizons were like significant."

Toledo gave Saban his first head coaching job in 1990, with the Rockets going 9-2 under Saban. He went 34-24-1 in five seasons with Michigan State before heading to LSU, where he breathed new life into a program that was coming off back-to-back losing seasons, winning it all in his fourth season in Baton Rouge.

Saban spent 50 total years in coaching. More than two dozens of his assistants became college or NFL head coaches. His Alabama teams made the four-team College Football Playoff eight times in its 10 years of existence. His Crimson Tide players earned more than $2 billion in NFL salaries.

"My goal as a coach was always to help players who came in the program to have a better chance to be more successful in life," Saban said. "So, it was about personal development, providing leadership that would help them enhance their full potential as people, but also the importance of being a good student, getting an education, developing a career off the field. And then also how can we help these guys be the best they can be as players so that maybe they could develop a career as a football player."