It was just a couple weeks into Bill Curry’s tenure at Alabama, and he was still trying to get comfortable. There was so much to do and so many people to meet with that he couldn’t think about anything outside of Crimson Tide football. Not that the Bama fans would have him worrying about anything else. Curry may have grown up in Georgia and gone to school at Georgia Tech, but he knew how important the Tide was to the state.

Or at least he thought he did. It took a rather unusual source to bring it all together for him.

While Curry’s wife and family were still settling into their new Tuscaloosa address, a call came from their former minister in Georgia, who was eager to find out how everything was going. Were they having any problems with the move? Had they been able to make some new friends? Most important, how were they responding to the demands of Alabama football?

“My wife said, ‘Football is like a religion here,’” Curry says. “My minister said, ‘It’s more important.’ He’s right. It’s more important than anything else in their lives.”

Curry laughed when he told that story, but he wasn’t kidding. Alabama football is perhaps the most vital part of the state’s fabric, and after three years at the school, he can certainly back up his former minister’s assertion. All Curry did was go 26–10 (.722 winning percentage) and win the 1989 SEC title. But he lost to Auburn three times, didn’t win a national title and wasn’t Bear Bryant. In a state where one strike can doom a football coach, three were too many to take.

This is the life Nick Saban has chosen. He left the Miami Dolphins with money and time still on the table for $4 million per year and all the expectations in the world. Like Curry, he no doubt thought he knew what was in store for him, but after watching 92,000-plus show up for the Tide’s spring game, Saban no doubt has a greater appreciation for his new environment and what lies ahead. He also can understand why what was thought to be one of the “dream jobs” in college football can also be considered a professional nightmare. Dealing with a fan base as rabid as Bama’s is not for everybody, no matter how much tradition there is at the school and how great the facilities are. What was once a position that would entice anybody with a whistle around his neck is now viewed as a potential graveyard.

Not that the Alabama position is alone in that regard. Think back 10 years and imagine anybody turning down a chance to coach at Notre Dame. Then fast-forward and think about those who have done just that. Jon Gruden. Bob Stoops. Urban Meyer. All said they would rather stay put than take over at the most storied program in college football. The same thing happened at Bama last winter when AD Mal Moore tried to find a successor for deposed boss Mike Shula. Looks like tradition doesn’t have the same value it once did, with coaches or recruits.

“It’s what happened yesterday that’s important now,” Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer says. “What you have been able to do the last few years is what kids are interested in.”

Coaches, too. Jim Grobe said he would rather remain at Wake Forest than coach in Tuscaloosa. Wake Forest?! Rich Rodriguez flirted with the idea of moving on but decided to stick with his spot at West Virginia. A few names emerged as potential candidates, but the biggies were conspicuous by their absence. What was going on here? Didn’t anybody understand what was being offered here? Alabama football is the gold standard. For many, however, that precious metal was a little too tough to protect.

“The grass isn’t always greener,” says California coach Jeff Tedford, whose name always surfaces when high-profile jobs open up. “The situation of staying in one place and working through things is attractive, if you can do it. Whether the administration has the patience is another thing.”

Because Saban was coaching in the NFL when he moved to Tuscaloosa, he wasn’t as worried about whether Dolphins’ owner Wayne Huizenga had the patience necessary to wait for a winner. There is no such thing in that league. And, had Saban been shown the door before his contract expired, he would have been a rich man, since he would have been owed $4.5 million per. In the college ranks, coaches hired to turn programs around need that sort of support, because it can’t often be done in a few seasons. When coaches do get things going in the right direction, and their schools make commitments to improving facilities and paying them salaries that are competitive with the best in the business, it often makes perfect sense to stick around, rather than move on.

Take Grobe, for instance. He was considered a prime candidate for the Bama job after taking Wake to the ACC title and Orange Bowl last season. But he signed a 10-year contract extension and pledged his loyalty to the Winston-Salem school in a move that appeared ridiculous on the surface, thanks to the vast disparity in tradition, resources and cachet between the two schools. Grobe, to his credit, doesn’t consider his decision to be short-sighted, even if many consider Wake Forest to be a basketball school and wonder whether it’s possible to win consistently in a major conference at an institution that has just about 4,000 students, a stadium that seats only 31,000 and a grand total of seven bowl appearances.

 “A great job may not necessarily be at the school with the most money, the biggest stadium or the largest alumni base,” Grobe says. “You have to look at the president and the athletic director and the quality of life as much as anything else.”

Saban no doubt looked at the institution to which he was headed very carefully before accepting the Alabama job. Given his legendary work ethic and attention to detail, he also paid close attention to Moore’s track record, which indicates that the athletic director is quite liable to be influenced by the whims of the demanding Alabama fans, who let their thoughts be known quite clearly through many different methods. They blog. They complain on sports radio. They threaten to withhold donations. They write angry letters and e-mails. And, when all else fails, they try the face-to-face approach. That’s what Curry encountered one day in a parking lot, when an older, female Tide fan accosted him and implored him to beat Auburn. She wasn’t just hoping or casually requesting. There was a real sense of urgency to her plea. Multiply that by an entire state, and you have the Alabama football equation.

“I know there’s tremendous expectations here,” Saban said when he was hired. “I can tell you that, however you feel about it, I have even higher expectations for what we want to accomplish. I want to win every game we play.”

Funny thing about that statement is that Saban may want to win every game, but the Tide fans need to win every game. It’s Saban’s job; it’s Alabama’s identity. The state has no major professional teams. It also is perceived in parts of the country as being a Deep South backwater outpost, thanks in large part to an academic situation that has one of the lowest per-pupil spending rates in the country. So, when Saban talks about winning and working hard to do it, that’s just the beginning of the task. He has to win national championships, something he did at LSU, and do so with a personality that makes every person in the state think that he is Their Coach.

Now, Saban may think he has the personality for all this. His ability to remain isolated from many of the distractions that can waylay a coach is unparalleled. If it doesn’t have a direct impact on winning a football game, then he doesn’t want to do it. At the press conference after he and his wife, Terry, landed in Tuscaloosa, Saban spoke about the desire to reconnect with the community and take part in the “relationships” which a college coach can make. That sounds great, but don’t look for Saban on the cocktail party circuit. While other coaches might be playing golf and shaking hands, Saban is likely to be watching tape or meeting with his equally overworked assistant coaches. Trouble is, that won’t earn him points with his constituents. And don’t think for a second that the Tide fans don’t look at themselves as the collective “boss” of their football coach. They want access. They want a connection. If Saban is to be truly successful in Tuscaloosa, he needs to win big and smile a lot. People want to meet him. Remaining above all that could be devastating in the long run. Bear Bryant could do that, because he was an icon. Nick Saban is just the latest coach trying to replicate the amazing Bryant legacy.

That’s something other coaches might not want to do. Though they are hardly the lot to run from challenges, college football coaches today understand that security is a valuable commodity. Saban is the seventh coach (eighth if you count Mike Price) in the 25 years since Bryant retired, especially interesting since Bryant himself was at the Capstone for 25 years.

“Look at Alabama,” Tedford says. “Mike Shula had a 10-win season in 2005, and he was fired (after ’06). Those things are fairly disturbing. It has turned into a big business as the (coaching) salaries have gone up. That’s important for the revenue stream, but the expectations to win grow. As the expectations get bigger, the patience decreases.”

                •    •    •

How crazy was that Alabama spring game? Well, they turned away about 10,000 fans. The students saw that they wouldn’t be able to get good seats, because so many people had staked out claims as early as two days in advance — for a scrimmage! — so they decided to stay away. If Bryant-Denny Stadium held 120,000 people, it might have been filled. Seriously.

You want to know the flip side of the Alabama challenge? There it is. The expectations are completely unrealistic. The demands on a coach’s time would jam the calendars of four men. But the absolute love and devotion for the program are unparalleled. Sometimes, that turns into obsession. Most of the time, it’s pure adulation. And that doesn’t stink.

Think about recruiting within that context. When Alabama held its “junior day” this spring and invited high school juniors from around the state to come to campus on their own dimes, 272 kids showed up. A great turnout at a big-time program is about 100. And of those 272, most had a direct link to the university, whether through a relative who was a former player or a one-time student in Tuscaloosa. The rest were just the offspring of pure Bama fans. Say what you want about what Auburn has accomplished over the past 25 years, including winning 15 games against the Tide and convincing Alabama to play the series on campus, rather than in Birmingham. The Tigers remain Bama’s little brother.

People throughout the state want the Tide to do well, and as long as there are links to the Old Days just a generation away, the recruiting grounds will remain fertile.

Should that not be enough, grab a map and draw a circle around Tuscaloosa. Memphis, Atlanta, Nashville, Jackson, New Orleans, and of course, Birmingham are all within a reasonable drive from campus. Think there’s a little bit of talent in those towns? If Alabama doesn’t have one of the five best recruiting classes in the nation next February, it will be an upset on par with an Ivy League school’s knocking off Florida.

There is a lot possible at Alabama, and Saban knows that. It’s just not likely to happen on a grand scale right away. There isn’t an abundance of talent on the team, and there aren’t too many playmakers on either side of the ball. Saban and his staff, most notably defensive coordinator Kevin Steele and top-shelf offensive minds Joe Pendry and Major Applewhite, will coach ’em up, but those hosses at LSU, Tennessee, Auburn and Georgia are getting some direction, too. It will likely be a couple seasons before the Tide can turn. That should be all right with the Bama faithful, provided there is indeed a gigantic payoff in the not-so distant future. Saban refers to the team as “a work in progress,” and that’s fine. But he seemed a little frustrated the day before the spring game when he spoke to reporters about how people are approaching this season with tremendous optimism, when they ought to be tempering their outlooks a bit.

“What the amazing thing to me is, is how we can have so many people that think about what the result can be, the result they would like for it to be and expectations of that result and talk about winning championships and all that kind of stuff, when the thing we need to be doing is figuring out what we need to do to do it,” he says.

A valid point, indeed. It’s also completely inappropriate to the discussion. Alabama fans expect championships every year, no matter what has to be done or what changes must be made. Saban had better get used to that, because that’s the way it is. Win today, win tomorrow or go away. Crimson Tide fans expect nothing short of perfection, and they aren’t too happy when they don’t get it. It’s great to have 92,000 people at your spring game, but not if each one expects a title each season. Sometimes, it’s not the best thing to have your dreams come true, because you discover they aren’t always perfect.

Just ask Bill Curry about that.

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