It was Oct. 24, just a few hours after Alabama had held off Tennessee in a hair-puller, moving to 7-1 and officially on its way back to national title contention. The scene outside Bryant-Denny Stadium was a celebratory shade of postapocalyptic. Fans continued to loiter among the tall statues that lined the courtyard, the larger-than-life likenesses of the five coaches who have led the Crimson Tide to national championships.
There were crowds gathered around only two. A family of four posed with Bear Bryant as others stood in line for their turn. Meanwhile, a pair of female students wearing Bryant fedoras and matching miniskirts posed, knees kicked out, as they flanked bronze Nick Saban.
"Excuse me, ladies," I said to the pair. "When Saban becomes better than Bryant, do you think everyone will trade in their houndstooth accessories for that crimson seersucker stuff that Saban likes to wear?"
It was an honest question. I received an honest response. "Shut the hell up!" their photographer quickly replied. "You don't walk onto holy ground and insult God."
It's a touchy thing, touching a bear. It's even touchier to touch a Bear.
But if one week from now Nick Saban is celebrating a victory in the second-ever College Football Playoff National Championship, should we start speaking of him as no longer the second-best coach in the history of Alabama football?
To an only slightly less blasphemous degree, if Dabo Swinney's Clemson team emerges from the desert victorious, will he have supplanted his orange elders -- Frank Howard and Danny Ford -- as the greatest coach to prowl among the Tigers of Death Valley?
Go ahead, loyalists, old-timers and those with framed portraits of Bryant hanging over your mantel: Be angry. But the numbers are what they are, and the guys coaching next Monday night have the advantage of still being in the process of writing their résumés. The numbers they're chasing can't be erased and improved upon. They're written on plaques.
The legends will always have the advantage of longevity. Bryant coached at Alabama 25 years, while Howard ran the show at Clemson for 30. Because of that alone, records such as career wins at each school (Bryant won 232, Howard 165) and conference championships (Bryant won 13, Howard eight) will be tough for anyone to topple. At 64, and with annual overtures from NFL teams, Saban certainly doesn't seem likely to top those marks. And in a college football world where winning 10 games a year can still get you fired (amirite, Coach Richt?), any sort of long-distance comparison feels unrealistic.
Instead, the fairest head-to-head comes when you look at each man's most comparable stretch of greatest success.
For Saban, that would be the here and now. He's one game away from wrapping up his ninth season in Tuscaloosa. His official record is 99-18, with four SEC championships and three national championships. Again, this is the official record. It's a little weird because five wins were vacated by the NCAA from his first year, a 7-6 campaign, because they included players who were ruled ineligible because of a textbook-benefits scandal.
For the sake of this comparison, we're including them, so we'll make that nine-year record 104-18. A win over Clemson would mark the Crimson Tide's fourth national title in seven years. Would that make it the greatest concentrated era of success in program history? Here's how it compares with the Bear's best nine-season stretch.
Saban, 2007-15, nine seasons
104-18 (.852)
National championships: 3 (2009, 2011, 2012)
SEC championships: 4 (2009, 2012, 2014, 2015)
10-win seasons: 8 (2008-15)
Bowl record: 6-3
Bryant, 1971-79, nine seasons
97-11 (.898)
National championships: 3 (1973, 1978, 1979)
SEC championships: 8 (1971-75, 1977-79)
10-win seasons: 8 (1971-75, 1977-79)
Bowl record: 5-4
In 1980, Bryant's team went 10-2, winning the Cotton Bowl for a sixth straight postseason victory. Just two years later, he retired (and shortly thereafter passed away) at age 69.
Of note when comparing the eras, Bryant held the advantage of a much looser NCAA rulebook and for years went recruiting with little to no scholarship limitations. In short, he never had to worry about having any wins vacated because of textbook distribution. The Bear also never dealt with a conference championship game, which has certainly benefited Alabama in the Saban era as a de facto national title play-in game. But that game has also cost the Crimson Tide. Remember the undefeated '08 season that was derailed in Atlanta?
Saban has spent his time with the Crimson Tide unhindered by the old bowl/poll system that all but ensured the national championship wouldn't be determined on the field but rather by press box ballots. Bryant certainly benefited from that system more than most, but he still dealt with plenty of postseason controversy, as two of his three titles during this stretch were split between polls.
But can there even be discussion about which coach faced the stiffer year-in, year-out competition? Bryant's entire SEC era was primarily "Bama and someone else," where another school or two might experience bursts of success only to inevitably fade back into the pack. Saban's work has taken place during a time when the SEC West alone has produced three different national champions. This is an era in which Ole Miss and Mississippi State are consistent Top 25 teams. That certainly wasn't the case when Bryant was in charge. All due respect to Archie Manning and Condredge Holloway, they were considered once-in-a-lifetime quarterbacks. In the past nine years, Saban has had to face Tim Tebow, Cam Newton and Johnny Manziel, let alone Dak Prescott, Bo Wallace and Chad Kelly.
In 1958, Bryant had to dig the program out of a much deeper hole than Saban did in '07 (Mike Shula > Ears Whitworth). Saban has produced a pair of Heisman Trophy winners versus Bryant's zero (Bear's lone winner, John David Crow, was at Texas A&M). The list of comparisons could go on for pages.
At worst, it's a push, PAAAWWWLL!
The same could be said for Swinney and Clemson's two-headed legend of Frank Howard and Danny Ford. The championship game will mark the finish of Swinney's seventh full season as Clemson's coach (he took over midway through '08 for dismissed boss Tommy Bowden). A national title would officially crown the past five seasons as the greatest era in the history of the 120-year-old program. Let's compare Swinney's tenure to the greatest eight-season performances from Howard and Ford.
Dabo Swinney, 2008-15, eight seasons (really 7½)
75-26 (.742)
National championships: 0
ACC championships: 2 (2011, 2015)
10-win seasons: 5 (2011-15)
Bowl record: 5-3
Danny Ford, 1981-88, eight seasons
71-21-4 (.760)
National championships: 1 (1981)
ACC championships: 5 (1981-82, 1986-88)
10-win seasons: 3 (1981, 1987-88)
Bowl record: 4-1
Frank Howard, 1955-62, eight seasons
55-26-2 (.675)
National championships: 0
ACC championships: 3 (1956, 1958, 1959)
10-win seasons: 0
Bowl record: 1-2
Really, and it hurts to realize this, it's a two-horse race. Howard never really put together a consistently great eight-year era. His only two undefeated years -- 11-0 in 1948 and 9-0-1 in 1950 -- are mashed in between a series of forgettable seasons of .500 or worse. This is taking nothing away from the man who quite literally pulled Clemson football up out of the mud, but it is Ford, whose controversial firing in '89 after a 10-2 record still fuels bar fights throughout Upstate South Carolina, who set the bar Swinney now tries to clear.
It's worth noting that Ford would have a fourth ACC title and at least one more bowl appearance if not for NCAA sanctions pinned on the program in 1983-84 for violations that started under his predecessor, Charley Pell, but were ruled to have continued under his watch. It's true that making it to a bowl game is easier now than even in Ford's time. Ford has always liked to brag about his postseason success against the Hall of Fame likes of Paterno, Osborne, Switzer, Bowden, etc. But Swinney has had similar big-trophy wins over the likes of Miles, Spurrier, Meyer and Bowden, too. It's not an off-the-range argument to claim that Swinney, who like Howard and Ford played at Alabama, has accomplished as much as Ford in a shorter period of time.
Check that: He has accomplished almost as much. He will always have to stand behind Ford until he delivers the title that finally allows Tigers fans to scrape those "1981 National Champion" stickers off their bumpers. That could happen one week from now.
So, should Swinney win the title next Monday, do I expect Clemson to rename its Death Valley boulder chunk "Dabo's Rock"? No.
Should Saban be the victor, do I think I will ever see a grown man openly weep over being allowed to sit at the table where Saban once ate breakfast, as I've witnessed at the Bear's nook at the Waysider Restaurant? Or 20 years from now, will I watch people line up to lay pennies on Saban's grave, as I've seen them do on Bryant's headstone in Birmingham? No and no, just as I don't believe that those female students will ever come back to take selfies draped in Saban seersucker.
The demigods will always be the demigods. But the numbers also will always be the numbers. And whoever adds that big shiny "1" to his win column next week might very well be considered his school's all-time greatest.