Sepich: Nick Saban builds college football dynasty at Alabama

College football has a repeat champion for the first time since 1995.

For the second consecutive season, a one-loss Alabama dismantled and embarrassed a No. 1-ranked, undefeated team in the BCS national championship game, leaving no doubt about who is the best team in college football.

While last year it was LSU who was humiliated 21-0 by the Crimson Tide, this time Notre Dame succumbed 48-14 to head coach Nick Saban’s incredibly talented and confident team, which has now won three of the last four national titles.

Notre Dame, playing for its first title since 1988, grabbed many of the headlines in the lengthy buildup to the game because of the Fighting Irish’s improbable perfect season that galvanized the prestigious school’s fans.

But that changed the moment Monday night’s game kicked off. Alabama stole the show in a lopsided championship contest, racing out to a 28-0 halftime lead and never looking back, as the Tide pounded the life and luck out of the Irish.

But this utter destruction at Sun Life Stadium in Miami, between college football’s two most storied programs, was more about Alabama’s supremacy than Notre Dame’s futility.

Ironically, Alabama’s rise to a level of dominance not seen since the Nebraska teams of the mid-1990s began when Saban left Miami, ditching the NFL’s Dolphins after two seasons at the professional level to take over a struggling, sleeping-giant college football program.

When Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 2007, the Crimson Tide were coming off a 6-7 season, facing NCAA sanctions and hadn’t won a Southeastern Conference championship since 1999. The job seemed tricky, even for a man who had previously turned around the football teams at Toledo, Michigan State and LSU in his lengthy and extensive coaching career — a career that began at his alma mater, Kent State, in 1972.

But it didn’t take long for Saban to restore pride in a program that claimed 12 previous national championships. Now, just six years into the new regime, that number is up to 15. And assuming Saban sticks around at ’Bama for the foreseeable future, it could continue to rise.

What Coach Saban has already accomplished at Alabama is truly remarkable. By recruiting the best talent the South has to offer and molding such skilled athletes into complete football players, his squads have battered opposing teams and left rival coaches shaking their heads and wondering how any college football team could be so strong, quick and smart all at the same time.

A publically soft-spoken man who saves his emotional, fiery moments to pump up his players, Saban is already halfway to matching the six national titles the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant won at Alabama.

The 61-year-old Saban, who also won a national championship at LSU before joining the Dolphins, may go down as the best collegiate football coach to ever live if he keeps this up.

Seasons culminating with BCS national championships have become the norm for Saban-coached teams, and he treated last night as such, saying in an interview with ESPN immediately following the game that he would enjoy the triumph for one night, maybe two.

Then, with many of the same players that destroyed Notre Dame, Saban and Alabama will begin their preparations for the 2013 season, hoping to win a third consecutive and 16th overall national championship.

I know I wouldn’t bet against them.

Write RJ at rms104@pitt.edu.