At SEC Media Days in July, Nick Saban told an amusing story about a kindly older woman who ran into him at a marina this summer and politely told him, "Maybe we'll win this year!"
Saban told the story to illustrate his exasperation with fans for whom even his 84 wins in eight seasons haven't been quite enough. But perhaps not surprisingly, that doesn't mean Saban's above keeping score against his own personal expectations for his team either, as he revealed in this interview snippet with ESPN published Tuesday.
“We haven’t finished the season in the last two seasons like we’d like,” Saban said. “People talk about you won four national championships. Well, I feel like we’ve had good enough teams to win eight. So I feel like we failed four times. I feel like I failed four times.
"Now is that being ... too difficult? I don't know. I just know we had other teams that had the talent, and we weren't able to do it."
Based on the Tide's No. 3 preseason ranking, the consensus opinion is that Saban has the talent to do it once again. But has that been the case for four other teams across his tenures at LSU and Alabama? (Keep in mind he is referring to LSU as well when he discusses his four national championships, unless he's claiming one for Alabama that no one else is awarding. The Tide has won three under Saban, in 2009, 2011 and 2012.)
In all fairness, he's not wrong.
2004: LSU opened their national title defense ranked No. 4 in the country before losing to eventual undefeated SEC champion Auburn 10-9 under controversial circumstances. Though the Tigers would finish the season 9-3, all three losses came away from home to teams in the top eight of the final AP poll.
2008: Saban's first great Alabama team went a perfect 12-0 in the regular season before falling to Tim Tebow's Gators -- one of the greatest SEC teams of all-time by many metrics -- in a competitive SEC Championship Game.
2013: Don't expect Saban to try any 57-yard game-winning field goals any time soon.
2014: The Tide earned the top seed in the inaugural College Football Playoff, only to be shredded by Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott and the Buckeyes' third-string-in-name-only quarterback to the tune of 537 yards.
Whether Saban "failed" in these seasons or not is completely in the eye of the beholder. But can you join him in arguing he could -- and maybe even should -- have even more national titles to his name than he does? Well, you're not going to contradict Saban himself, are you?
Wink of the CBS eye to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
