With a national championship on the line, it’s Saban vs Day, Alabama vs Ohio State
Ryan Day has a chance to start building his legacy. He’s two years in at Ohio State and already has the Buckeyes in the national championship game. He could become the youngest head coach lead his team to a national title in two decades.
Nick Saban, meanwhile, has the opportunity to continue etching his name into the lore of college football’s best. He has been in this position before. Eight national championship appearances as a head coach. Six trophies, five since 2009. One more, and he stands alone at the top of college football.
It all collides on Monday at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium when Saban’s top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide (12-0) and Day’s third-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes (7-0) face off in the College Football Playoff National Championship game. Kickoff is set for 8:15 p.m.
“You want to finish strong,” Saban said. “That’s always a part of any season. That’s going to be the challenge for us in this particular game against a very good team.”
Day added: “Our guys understand what’s at stake. At the end of the day, it comes down to executing your job and doing your job and being accountable to the guy next to you. That’s what it is. You can make it bigger than it is, but at the end of the day you’ve got to do your job, and it’s about the execution and preparation. The more you prepare, the more confident you can be on game day.”
The game also serves as the conclusion of a turbulent, uneven, unprecedented season played under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that kept concerns creeping until the final days of the season. Reports surfaced early in the week about potential COVID-19 issues in the Ohio State program that led to discussions of postponing the title game until Jan. 18.
But worries quickly subsided and both teams passed their final round of COVID-19 testing on Friday before making their way to Miami. Alabama arrived Friday night. Ohio State landed on Saturday.
And the game will be played on Monday.
“As I have said all week, the game is on,” College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said Friday. “... We are looking forward to a great night for college football.”
And it will be a night of college football featuring two coaches on the opposite ends of the head coaching spectrum.
First, there’s Day. He’s two years into his tenure at Ohio State and already has a 23-1 record (including three wins when he served as acting head coach in 2018). The Buckeyes have won the Big Ten in both of his seasons and has cruised into the College Football Playoffs both years.
With the Big Ten playing just an eight-game, conference-only schedule in the regular season, Day and Ohio State had less room for error than usual. And then three of their games got canceled due to COVID-19.
Ohio State ran the table in its five regular-season contests that were played, rallied to beat Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game to make the four-team playoff (to the chagrin of several teams that played five and six more games than the Buckeyes during the regular season) and crushed Clemson in the Sugar Bowl to avenge its semifinal loss from last year.
And a reminder: Day is 41 years old. That’s 11 years younger than Saban was when he won his first title at LSU in 2003. The only coach this century to be younger than day and win a national title: Bob Stoops, who was 40 when he led Oklahoma to the national title to cap the 2000 season.
“No one ever talks about getting to the national championship; they talk about winning the national championship,” Day said. “Along the way there are certain goals that you have to reach to get to this point, but the ultimate goal is to win this game. When you have your goals of beating your rival, of winning the conference, of winning the semifinal and then finally this game, you have to check off those boxes.
“But ultimately this is the final goal. That’s what all the focus is on right now.”
And then there’s Saban, the architect of college football’s perennial powerhouse.
He has had Alabama in the four-team playoff field six of seven years. He has lost multiple games in a season just three times in the past 10 years. He is tied with Bear Bryant for the most national championships by a head coach in college football history with six.
And he keeps finding ways to adapt, critical in a season like 2020 where adapting and flexibility were key.
Having a stacked roster helps, too.
At Saban’s disposal this year: The Heisman Trophy winner (receiver DaVonta Smith), the unanimous first-team All-American quarterback (Mac Jones), the nation’s top running back (Najee Harris), the nation’s top offensive line (led by Outland Trophy winner Alex Leatherwood and Rimington Trophy winner Landon Dickerson) and the runner-up for the Chuck Bendnarik and Jim Thorpe Awards (cornerback Patrick Surtain Jr.).
The result: Alabama has outscored opponents by an average of 29.2 points, including an average differential of 17 points in its four games against teams that entered bowl season ranked among the top 10 in the country (Texas A&M, Georgia, Florida, Notre Dame).
“It’s hard to compare teams,” Saban said. “You always want your team to have great togetherness and be positive in their work and what they try to do to accomplish the goals that they have, and people have to be responsible for their own self-determination so they can go out there and do their job at a high level. I think those things probably are similar with all these teams, but the personality of this team has been really good all year in terms of their buy-in and how they’ve tried to establish those qualities that make them a good team. I’m very proud of what this group has been able to accomplish and what they’ve done to this point to create this opportunity for themselves.”
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