The marquee matchup for college football this weekend brings us to Tuscaloosa, AL, where the No. 11 Texas Longhorns will meet the No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide for a Saturday night showdown at Bryant-Denny Stadium. This matchup of blue bloods and future SEC rivals will once again pit Alabama head coach Nick Saban against one of his former assistants in Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian. If history is any indicator, Sark will have his work cut out for him on Saturday.
Nick Saban is 28-2 all-time when facing one of his former assistant coaches. That long list of coaches who were felled by their former boss includes Mark Dantonio, Jimbo Fisher, Derek Dooley, Will Muschamp, Kirby Smart, Jeremy Pruitt, Jim McElwain, Billy Napier, Lane Kiffin, and Sark with Alabama’s victory over Texas in Austin last season. Both losses in this dominant run came in 2021, first with Fisher’s Texas A&M squad topping Bama during the regular season and then in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game with Smart’s Georgia beating the Tide for the title.
Saban’s dominance has casted a large shadow over the SEC for the better part of the past 15 years, which explains why so many rival programs in the league have tried (and failed) to duplicate that success by hiring one of his assistants. Schools like Tennessee in particular have gone to the Saban coaching tree multiple times, only to watch the master totally evaporate the pupil on numerous occasions. Sark came really close in a one-point loss at home last season and we’ll see if he has the goods to pull it off on the road this year.