#The best vs. the up-and-comer

It feels inevitable.

As soon as Monday night, or as late as the near future, Nick Saban will likely win a seventh national championship, passing fellow Alabama legend Paul “Bear” Bryant for the most in college football history.

Saban doesn’t need the record. He doesn’t need another ring. He doesn’t need to coach another game to make a strong case as the greatest of all-time.

But if his wife, Terry, were just a few months older, Saban might never have coached at all.

“I think I have to give all the credit for Don James, who was my college coach, calling me in one day and saying, I’d like for you to be a [graduate assistant], and I immediately responded that I’m tired of going to school, I don’t really want to go to graduate school, and I don’t want to be a coach, so why would I do something like this?” Saban said this week. “Terry had another year of school, so I really couldn’t go on and do anything else because she wanted to finish, and we wanted her to finish and we had promised our parents that if they let us get married that we’d both graduate from college.”

Saban, a former Kent State defensive back, long thought he’d work at a service station — like his father, Nick Sr. — changing tires, pumping gas, greasing cars.

“I think that when my mind does drift, I oftentimes thank coach James for this,” Saban once said. “Because every car dealer that I’ve ever had or known all wants to be a coach.”

Since Saban arrived at Alabama in 2007, the Crimson Tide has never gone three straight years without winning a national championship. Before the 2009 title — when Saban became the first coach to win national championships at two different schools, having previously led LSU to a BCS title in 2003 — Alabama hadn’t claimed the throne in 17 years, winning it just once in 29 years.

Before Saban, Alabama hadn’t been the top-ranked team in the nation in 15 years. This season is the 13h straight in which Alabama (12-0) has held the No. 1 ranking, which the Tide are taking into Monday’s national championship game against No. 3 Ohio State (7-0).

“You’re going against the best in the world, and certainly Alabama is,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “Coach Saban’s career speaks for itself. I watched them win a lot of national championships, so nothing but the utmost respect.”

The 69-year-old architect of the greatest dynasty in college football history didn’t win his first title until he was 52, until his 11th job, until his 10th season as a head coach.

At 44, Saban finished his second year as a head coach by going 6-5-1 at Michigan State. At 41, Day’s second season in charge could end with him becoming the second-youngest head coach since 1982 to win the national championship.

“I think he’s an outstanding coach,” Saban said of Day. “I think he’s taken advantage of a great opportunity and certainly done an outstanding job with it.”

It’s an opportunity Day didn’t expect.

When Urban Meyer was suspended for three games in 2018, Day was in his first season solely in charge of the Ohio State offense and in just his second year with the program. The former New Hampshire quarterback had never been a head coach, having spent 16 years as an assistant at New Hampshire, Boston College, Florida and Temple, as well as with the NFL’s Eagles and 49ers.

Still, Day was selected over Buckeyes colleagues like longtime Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano and former Indiana head coach Kevin Wilson to fill in for Meyer.

“I was very surprised,” Day said then. “It did catch me off guard. It was one of those things where you just wake up the next day and you think, is this really happening?”

Just two years ago, Day said the job felt as easy as “drinking through a fire hose,” and that taking over for a coach with three national championships and taking over a program expecting another brought “added pressure there that you feel.”

It was then that Day saw recurring texts from his former coach and mentor, Chip Kelly — who had hired Day in Philadelphia and San Francisco after serving as his offensive coordinator at New Hampshire — telling him what he couldn’t yet know.

“You’re built for this,” Kelly wrote.

When Meyer announced he would resign at the end of the 2018 season, Day was announced as his successor.

Since then, Day has gone 23-1, including 5-1 against top-10 teams. With an upset of Alabama, Day would become the seventh active coach to win a national title and the youngest to accomplish the feat since Meyer won in 2006, when he was 42.

Just four months ago, Day wasn’t confident he would coach this season.

After the Big Ten canceled play, he said: “We still have an opportunity to give our young men what they have worked so hard for: a chance to safely compete for a national championship this fall.”

All the Buckeyes needed was a chance. It’s all their coach needed, too.

“Certainly very, very honored to be in this situation,” Day said. “I feel like during these past two years and even a little bit more I just haven’t been able to take a deep breath. … [I’m] looking forward to finishing this thing the right way, and then taking a deep breath and decompressing and trying to reflect on what just happened this year.”