FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — There were some dark days at Notre Dame and Alabama, dark years really, during which two of college
football's proudest programs flailed and foundered.
Notre Dame won the national championship in 1988, then spent much of the next two decades running through coaches — four if
you count the guy who never coached a game — and drifting between mediocre and pretty good.
Alabama won the national championship in 1992, then spent the next 15 years running through coaches — four if you count the
guy who never coached a game — and drifting between mediocre and pretty good.
As the 21st century dawned, the Fighting Irish and the Crimson Tide were old news, stodgy remnants of a glorious past, not
moving fast enough to keep up with the times, and searching for someone to lead them back to the top.
"It parallels Notre Dame to a tee," said Paul Finebaum, who has covered Alabama as a newspaper reporter and radio show host
for more than 30 years. "The attitude was 'We're Alabama. We don't have to do what others are doing. We'll win because of
our tradition.' Finally everyone passed Alabama."
And Notre Dame.
Then along came Nick Saban and Brian Kelly to knock off the rust, fine tune the engines and turn the Crimson Tide and Fighting
Irish into the sharpest machines in college football again.
No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Alabama meet Monday night in Miami in a BCS championship between two titans not all that far removed
from tough times.
"The pendulum swings," said former Alabama coach Gene Stallings, the last Tide coach before Saban to bring home a national
title. "You don't stay good forever. You don't stay bad forever."
Of course, Alabama and Notre Dame fans aren't real comfortable with the first part of that statement. The Crimson Tide and
Fighting Irish were perennial national championship contenders for decades.
For Alabama, replacing Bear proved
difficult. Paul Bryant won six national championships in 25 years as the
coach in Tuscaloosa,
and when he stepped down the Crimson Tide felt compelled to bring
back one of his boys to replace him. Ray Perkins was hired
away from the New York Giants, and spent four years at Alabama
before going back to the NFL.
Alabama tried going outside the family and hired Bill Curry. He lasted three years, before leaving for Kentucky.
"You follow somebody like Coach Bryant, it's an extremely difficult situation," Stallings said.
Stallings played for Bryant at Texas
A&M, coached under him at Alabama and even sounded a bit like the
Bear with his baritone
drawl. He found success and relative peace in seven seasons as
coach of the Tide.
"I told Coach Bryant stories. I wasn't in competition with Coach Bryant," Stallings said. "I think that's one of the reasons
I was, quote, accepted by the Alabama people."
After Stalling left in 1996, things started
to get ugly at Alabama. School leaders tried again to keep their most
highly prized
job in the family, hiring Mike DuBose, a former defensive lineman
for Bryant. That didn't work, so Alabama swung the other
direction by hiring Dennis Franchione, who skipped town after two
seasons for Texas A&M, and Mike Price, who brought a whole
new level of embarrassment to Alabama. Not long after he was hired
away from Washington State, Price was fired after a night
of drunken partying became public.
Alabama reverted back to old form, going
with one of its own in former Tide quarterback Mike Shula. Like DuBose,
he wasn't
up to the task. On top of everything else, the NCAA slammed
Alabama, wiping all its victories from the 2005 and '06 seasons
off the books.
Meanwhile, over the years, Alabama had
fallen behind others in the Southeastern Conference when it came to
facilities and
support staff. Big-time college football is an arms race of sorts,
and the Crimson Tide weren't investing like the competition
— like LSU had while winning a national title under Saban, for
example.
"The program lost its compass," Finebaum said.
When it came time to hire another coach in
2006, Alabama courted Saban and Steve Spurrier. Spurrier wasn't
interested and
Saban had an NFL season to finish. When the Tide was turned down
by Rich Rodriguez, who opted instead to stay with West Virginia,
it was rock bottom.
"It was the darkest moment I can ever remember in Alabama history," Finebaum said. "Alabama fans gave up that day.
As it turned out, it was one of the best things to ever happen to Alabama.
"You've got to have some luck," Stallings said.
As luck would have it, Saban was ready to get back to college football.
Alabama lured him away from the NFL with a $4 million a year contract that made him the highest-paid coach in college football
— and gave him the power and support to run the program the way he wanted, not the way it had been run before.
"Alabama finally hired someone who has not afraid to tell everybody to get out of the way," Finebaum said.
For Notre Dame, it is a similar tale. Lou
Holtz won that championship in 1988 and made the Fighting Irish a
regular title
contender, but by the end of his tenure, Notre Dame started to
slip and the people in charge were resistant to the types of
changes needed to keep up with the competition.
The Irish promoted Bob Davie to take over for Holtz. In five seasons he never won more than nine games and went 0-3 in bowls.
Davie, now the coach at New Mexico, doesn't make excuses for his record at Notre Dame, but he does note that the school has
been willing to make the type of changes in recent years that he sought back in the late 1990s.
"Their facilities have gone from being poor to cutting edge in college football," he said. "Their salaries for coaches are
competitive with everybody in the country. They are accepting early graduates (from high school).
"I know the dynamics there very well and there's a lot of people who think you don't have to do that at Notre Dame. It's proven
now that you do have to do those things."
Former athletic director Kevin White was the
catalyst for many of those changes, but he was also the man who hired
George
O'Leary, who was caught fibbing on his resume and stepped down,
Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis. The Weis hiring in 2004
was especially telling.
Notre Dame wanted Urban Meyer, who was then at Utah and the hottest commodity on the coaching market. Meyer worked at Notre
Dame under Holtz and had called being Fighting Irish coach his dream job.
And he turned it down to coach Florida because he realized it would be easier to win national championship with the Gators
than with the Irish. He won two with Florida in six years.
The Irish hired Weis, the New England Patriots' offensive coordinator who had never been a head coach but did graduate from
Notre Dame. He was gone in five years.
This time when Notre Dame went looking for a
coach, the hottest candidate on the market was Kelly, who climbed the
coaching
ladder slowly, winning big every step of the way. The difference
was the hottest commodity also wanted Notre Dame, and White's
successor, Jack Swarbrick, scooped him up quickly.
Kelly has continued to push Notre Dame into the 21st century, implementing a training table to make it easier for the players
to eat healthy. He pushed for music to be pumped through the PA system at Notre Dame Stadium to rouse a fanbase that over
the years had started to sit on its hands.
"It's flashier," Davie said. "They are a lot more like everybody else is but that's what's making them competitive."
Now what separates both Notre Dame and Alabama from the competition is their coaches.