Nick Saban explains how things changed at Alabama after his first national championship in 2009
Many people see parallels between what Nick Saban built at Alabama and what Curt Cignetti currently has going at Indiana.
It stands to reason, given that Saban and Cignetti are old family friends and Cignetti was on Saban’s Alabama staff as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator from 2007-2010. They teamed up to help the Crimson Tide to the 2009 national championship, the first of six Saban won in Tuscaloosa.
During an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show on ESPN on Monday, Saban said he also sees similarities between the current Hoosiers and his early Crimson Tide teams. And he made note of what challenges Indiana might be facing in the future if they can beat Miami in Monday night’s College Football Playoff national championship game.
“One of the things that these guys are going to have to go through, which Curt’s going to have to go through, is, he has done this phenomenal job in Indiana,” ,” Saban said, via On3. “Everybody wanted to come to Indiana. People wanted to transfer there. Everybody wanted to go there because they wanted to prove something. That’s how it was at Alabama. Then, when you win in 2009 and you climbed the mountain successfully, you become the mountain.”
Saban said he noticed a change in the types of players on his Alabama roster after the first national championship. Those early Crimson Tide teams were loaded with in-state players such as Julio Jones, Mark Barron and Marcell Dareus who grew up on Alabama football, while the later ones were populated by recruits from around the country who had learned about the program due to its success under Saban.
“Now, everybody wants to come because of what your program can do for them, and that dynamic changes everything dramatically, in terms of how you got to motivate your players, how you put together your team,” Saban said. “Our 2009 team was the first national championship at Alabama.
“Julio, Mark Barron, all those guys came to Alabama because they wanted to prove something. They were Alabama guys. But, once we won, everybody was coming to Alabama for what Alabama could do for them, and that changed the dynamic dramatically, and that was more challenging for me as a coach.”
Saban seemed to handle that “challenge” pretty well, given that he won five more national championships at Alabama after 2009. But it’s absolutely true that the makeup of the Crimson Tide roster in later years was definitely different.
