Nick Saban is in familiar territory and treading unknown waters at the same time. Seems like an oxymoron, but let’s burrow into this thinking a little bit.

The seven-time national champion is tasked with replacing offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, who takes the same title with the New England Patriots, and defensive coordinator Pete Golding, who joins one of Saban’s former assistants, Lane Kiffin, at Ole Miss as the defensive coordinator.

Saban is no stranger to replacing his top assistants. It comes with the territory of being one of the most elite programs in sports — when you’re good, programs will come calling to poach your assistants that helped you get there and recruit the talent you’ve got. It’s typically a two- to three-year cycle with offensive coordinators at Alabama, and while defensive coordinators have stuck around Tuscaloosa a bit longer on average in the Saban era, the Crimson Tide have actually never won a national title with a first-year defensive coordinator.

Which, in turn, also means that the Tide have never won a title with two first-year coordinators, a scenario in which Saban finds himself for the fifth time ahead of his 17th season at Alabama. Along with the replacement of their coordinators, the Crimson Tide must replace significant starters at essentially every position on the roster, namely QB Bryce Young, EDGE Will Anderson Jr., RB Jahmyr Gibbs, and multiple starters on both the offensive and defensive lines. Associate defensive coordinator and safeties coach Charles Kelly also jumped ship to Colorado to be Deion Sanders’ defensive coordinator.

Now, I don’t want you to feel sorry for Nick Saban or for Alabama. This isn’t a “woe is me” piece on why you should pity the sport’s most accomplished coach in the modern era. I’m not aiming to make excuses for the program if it comes short of its decade-defining standard for the third year in a row, but I think it’s important to pinpoint this period in the timeline of college football.

Saban’s former defensive coordinator, Kirby Smart, has won consecutive national championships, including one against his former employer, and he appears poised to stack up some more within the decade. The Crimson Tide have not had a three-year stretch without winning a national title since 2006-08, the latter two years being Saban’s first two campaigns in town.

It’s happening slowly, but there’s a chance that a changing of the guard in college football is more realistic than we may be talking about right now.

If Georgia cakewalks through the 2023 schedule, expectedly with no more than one loss, and claims another trophy, Saban’s glory days will be in the distant past in the memory of college football fans and media that are stingily known for their “yeah, but what have you done lately?” attitude.

Yes, Alabama still brings in the top-ranked recruiting class in the country entering 2023. Yes, the Crimson Tide still have kids who have been looking at stars next to their names for most of their adolescence on the roster. And yeah, it’s still Nick Saban, and David Pollack pissed him off by rubbing Smart’s rings in his face on national television. That’s bad juju.

At the very least, the sport belongs to Saban AND Smart now. After all, Saban will turn 72 during the season, and Smart won’t turn 50 for almost three more years. Cue Dewey from “Malcolm in the Middle” saying “The future is now, old man!”

Both teams are neck and neck in terms of dominance on the recruiting trail to where they can bring in talent from any state in the country, and the transfer portal seems nothing but a luxury for programs at their echelon and prestige. If Georgia keeps winning like this and churning out first-round picks in the NFL draft, the Tide may turn in the Bulldogs’ favor as the top dawg in the sport.

But here’s the caveat that trails back to the main point of this article: who does Saban call to be his coordinators in this critical time in the program? Does the thought of calling his potential replacements cross his mind? He has often hired from within when it comes to naming new coordinators (Smart, Mike Locksley, Tosh Lupoi), but for a time like this where the apparent never-ending hourglass of national championship runs in Tuscaloosa could be running thin, is there anyone in the building that you’d trust to, dare I say, get Alabama over the “hump?”

Plenty of college football fans don’t believe that an in-house move is the right call. We gathered some of your ideas on Twitter for the offensive coordinator job specifically after the news of O’Brien’s departure.

Kliff Kingsbury and Dan Mullen were the most popular choices, but Kingsbury seems content in Thailand for the time being. Still, it would be hard to swipe decline for Saban. Also, an internal hire on the defensive staff might not be popular as the Alabama defense underperformed and was undisciplined at times in 2022.

Also, I found it quite amusing how some fans were quick to throw their own coach’s name into the discussion just to be rid of them (Jimbo Fisher, Justin Fuente, Josh Gattis).

We have to consider that Saban can probably hire just about anybody in the country, and the resources available at a program like Alabama are still going to keep the Crimson Tide in title races for as long as Saban is around, at least. I think Alabama will be fine, but for once, there is a legitimate threat that its top spot in the college football food chain is loosening, if it hasn’t already caved in.

I’m awaiting your probably accurate accusations of hyperbole and blasphemy in my DMs. Chances are, Alabama will be totally fine and Nick Saban will keep Alabama contending for titles until he’s 95. Ecstatic yay for Bama fans, sarcastic yay for everyone else.