Two football seasons ago, we revisited the idea that Nick Saban was overrated as a college football coach, despite the heaps of praise plaid around him by a zillion pundits. We deconstructed this in 2018, originally, but it’s time to go back and look, really, at the realities since then now that Saban has retired to a cushy life of being a pundit himself and hawking shit on television. We go back way back with him, to the mid-1990s.

The last “title” Saban won was the 2020 mythical national championship, in a season where he and his ilk endangered the lives of their student athletes to win at any cost. Before that, Saban had not won an MNC since 2017. However, between 2009 and 2017, he won five MNCs, most of which came under dubious circumstances: in fact, we only see the 2009 and 2015 titles as being legitimate, so that cuts away directly.

His 2003 “title” with LSU was a sham, of course, as well. Saban never came close to winning even a conference title with Michigan State in the 1990s, and his NFL stint was a losing one with the Miami Dolphins. We pointed out years ago that the SEC’s shady dealings were the only reason Saban could win anywhere, and that once all teams could openly pay players above board and legally, his edge would die.

We were right: since 2020 was such a joke of a football season where Alabama played twice as many games as its eventual opponent in the “title” game, Saban went out with a relative whimper. His 2021 team got torched in the “title” game by a conference rival; his 2022 team didn’t even qualify for the four-team CFP; and his 2023 team lost to cheatin’ Michigan in the CFP semifinals as Saban got a taste of his own medicine.

His 2017 “championship” was dubious, as we explored elsewhere, on top of that; basically, Saban went the last eight seasons of his career without a legitimate national championship, which is a far cry from the claims made by those who laud his every breath. Again, his tenures at MSU and in the NFL prove he was not genius; he always needed better players and resources to win, and he probably got the former illicitly, really.

There is no other way to explain his 25-22-1 record with the Spartans through his first four years, especially since he posted a 39-13 record in his first four LSU seasons—in an allegedly “tougher” league. His first four years at Alabama? 43-11. So, why couldn’t he figure out how to win at Michigan State? Heck, he didn’t even make it four years with the Dolphins: he went 15-17 in two seasons and ran like a baby bitch back to the SEC.

Why? The answer is obvious to anyone with an ounce of critical-thinking skills: favorable advantages in personnel and resources that he couldn’t pull off in the B1G or the NFL. There is no other way around his inability to win at MSU or in the NFL. Yes, he did go 9-2 at MSU in his fifth season before bolting to LSU, but in those two losses? His team was outscored by 54 points, showing the nine wins were actually an anomaly.

So, the common thread in his “successes” was the SEC: do the math, folks. When you hear people claim Saban won seven “natties”? The real number is actually two, and that is a lot less impressive than seven. Of course, college football always has been about claiming superiority, even when the math and numbers do not back it up. Strap on some critical-thinking skills, people, and do the research for yourself to learn, now.