Ever Since Bear, Alabama's Been on a Coaching Carousel

Coaching changes are an annual rite in college football.

This year, 18 of 119 teams in Division I-A (now officially known as the Bowl Subdivision) have changed coaches, including top-tier programs Miami and Alabama. But while Miami acted quickly to name a new coach within two weeks, Alabama remains without a leader nearly a month later.

Alabama is one of the nation's most storied programs, and it has both deeppocketed boosters and top-notch facilities, but it appears athletic director Mal Moore has overestimated the attractiveness of the job.

Contrast that to the approach at Miami, where Larry Coker — with a 59–15 record and a national title on his resume — was fired following a 6–6 season that was plagued by on- and off-field issues. Perhaps realizing that its failure to keep up with the sport's great facilities arms race would make it tough to land a big-name coach from another school, Miami promoted defensive coordinator Randy Shannon to the head job on December 8. Thus the program is settled heading into the bowl game and the critical recruiting season, and the continuity that Shannon is likely to maintain among the assistants should ease the transition.

Alabama fired Mike Shula, the son of a legendary NFL coach and a former Crimson Tide quarterback, following a 6–6 regular season and a fourthstraight loss to Auburn. The move would make more sense had the school not given Shula a lengthy, lucrative extension following last year's surprising 10-win season.

Having let Shula go — and paid $4 million to do so — Alabama clearly intended to make a splash with its next hire, who will be the fifth Tide head coach since 2000. Steve Spurrier was one rumored target but elected to stay at South Carolina, parlaying the interest into his own raise. The school turned next to West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez, an innovative offensive mind credited with reinvigorating the Mountaineers' program. But Rodriguez reacted angrily to reports that he had accepted Alabama's offer, and eventually agreed to remain in Morgantown (with concessions, of course) on the same day Miami was naming Shannon.

Two weeks later, Alabama is still without a coach — defensive coordinator Joe Kines will serve on an interim basis in the Independence Bowl — and Moore appears no closer to a decision.

Part of the problem at Alabama is that every coach it hires is compared to the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, who won five AP national titles in Tuscaloosa and retired as the leader in all-time coaching wins. But despite 24 seasons having passed since the Bear's retirement and near-immediate death, his considerable shadow still looms over the program, both in lore and in the form of his son, Paul Jr., a wealthy businessman and one of school's most influential trustees. The younger Bryant's position on the board and frequent contributions to the athletic department have given him tremendous sway in personnel decisions as evidenced by the string of coaches with ties to his father.

Shula was the seventh Alabama coach since Bryant's retirement, and only one — Gene Stallings — has enjoyed the kind of success the school's trustees and boosters expect annually. Stallings, who played for Bryant at Texas A&M, won a surprising national title in 1992, a championship that was followed three years later by stiff NCAA sanctions. He retired following the 1996 season and was succeeded by Mike DuBose, whose four-year tenure was a disaster noteworthy only for a surprising Orange Bowl season in 1999.

DuBose, like Stallings, had played for the Bear and thus possessed the only qualification that really mattered for an Alabama head coach. Indeed, he was the fourth successive former Bryant player hired by the school. But his reign quickly ran off-course, with allegations of an extra-marital affair playing out in the national press. Only the Orange Bowl berth in 1999 staved off the negativity, and when the team struggled in 2000, DuBose was fired.

The DuBose debacle seemed to cure the school of the need to find coaches with ties to Bryant. Alabama hired TCU's Dennis Franchione, who soon found himself dealing with still more NCAA sanctions, this time the result of violations under DuBose. Franchione said all the right things, but when Texas A &M offered him a huge contract, he bolted Alabama after just two seasons without so much as a goodbye to his team.

After the tumultuous tenures of Du-Bose and Franchione, things got even worse as the school's next coach, Washington State's Mike Price, would never actually coach a game for the Tide. He was let go after allegations surfaced of a drunken escapade with exotic dancers at an offseason function. Desperate to find a coach and burned by two straight outsiders, Alabama turned to Shula, another former Bryant player, but the results were mixed. Shula produced three bowl bids in four seasons, but failed to get the Tide to the SEC Championship game and went 0–4 against arch-rival Auburn, the only Alabama coach to lose four straight to the Tigers.

The problem at Alabama may be one of expectations. The school expects national titles, but it has a long way to go just to be competitive in the SEC East, which it hasn't won since 1999. The two stretches of NCAA probation have damaged the program deeply, limiting scholarships during a time when other SEC schools were surging. The tradition and facilities may be first-rate, but today's recruits likely know little of the program's illustrious history and can find similar facilities — and TV exposure — just about anywhere.

Still, that hasn't stopped Moore from trying. Having been turned down by Rodriguez, he is rumored to be in talks with Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban, who won a national title at LSU before bolting for the NFL. But Saban is a micromanager who would likely chafe under the kind of program that has turned the post once held by the most famous coach in the sport into a revolving door.

Alabama needs to turn the page on the Bryant era and realize it is no longer atop the national, or even SEC, pecking order. Moore should forget about former Bryant assistants and bigname coaches from other programs and look instead for a dynamic, young coach who will be content to build a championship team in Tuscaloosa. It won't thrill the boosters, but then again, can they be thrilled with the way the last 24 years have gone?

Mr. Levine is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.