Saban Announces Retirement – January 11

The greatest college football coach of the modern era, Nick Saban, has announced his retirement. Saban, Alabama’s head coach for the past 17 years, won 87.4 percent of his games with the Crimson Tide. With stints at Toledo, Michigan State, and LSU, Saban’s career college record was 292-71-1. He also did two years in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins where he went 15-17 overall. 

Along with New England head coach Bill Belichick (who will leave the Patriots after 24 seasons), Saban helped revolutionize modern defense. Pattern matching coverages have been the norm in both college and professional football for the past several years. With the rise of the spread offense at the college level, Saban found a way to level the playing field. Then, with great foresight, he saw that playing good defense wasn’t enough. In today’s game, his Alabama teams needed to be a threat to score on every play on offense.

There Will Never Be Another Saban

In 2014, the defensive-minded Saban hired Lane Kiffin for one reason – to modernize his offense. That’s when Alabama’s shift to an offensive juggernaut occurred. That’s one of the reasons why Saban was so great. He recognized the game had changed and that he had to adapt. And adapt he did. 

Saban retires with 201 SEC wins. That is the second-most wins in conference history (tied with Georgia’s Vince Dooley). The only coach to win more SEC games was another Alabama legend – Paul “Bear” Bryant who won 232 in 25 seasons in Tuscaloosa. In addition, Saban and his Crimson Tide teams won 13 SEC titles and six national championships. 

Throw in a national title at LSU and Saban has seven total. He won a total of 12 conference championships, winning a MAC title in his only season at Toledo. Saban-coached teams won 19 bowl games and through 28 years as a college head coach, he never had a losing season. His worst seasons were in 1996 and 1998 at Michigan State when his teams went .500. Saban finishes his career in sixth place on the all-time FBS wins list. 

Sports Hub Cappers Crushing College Basketball

The top three handicappers on yesterday’s leaderboard absolutely destroyed their college basketball picks, going 8-0 on the hardwood. Of course, all three cappers were Sports Hub experts, guys that can only be found right here at the only site dedicated to helping both handicappers and bettors. That, of course, would be Sports Hub.

Let’s see who those cappers were.

• No. 1 goes 4-0: Tonny Ricci is one of the most consistent handicappers we have here at SportsHub. Tonny went 4-0 yesterday and added $400 to his bankroll. All four of his picks were on college basketball games. Over the last 30 days, Tonny has hit 60 percent of his CBB picks and is third on the 30-day NCAAB leaderboard. 
• No. 2 goes 3-0: Jhon Walsh hit all three of his picks yesterday, two of which were on college basketball games. When considering both NBA and NCAAB picks, Jhon is No. 1 on our 7-day basketball leaderboard with $570 in total winnings.
• No. 3 goes 3-1: Ben Miller is no stranger to the top of the leaderboard. He went 3-1 yesterday and hit both of his college basketball picks. Ben is a guy you definitely want to follow here at Sports Hub. He’s up $2458 over the last 30 days.

Saban Ends Career, Carroll Out in Seattle, Belichick News

What a crazy day in the coaching world. Some of the legends in the game are moving on. Saban, of course, retired yesterday and Alabama will be looking for a new head coach. The timing was right for Saban, who said he really didn’t like what college football has become. He was all about building a culture, but nowadays it seems everyone is chasing NIL money.

Two more coaches are out in the NFL and they are big names. It’s hard to believe that in two days some of the biggest names in coaching football are out. Life goes on though and so do sports.

Here’s what’s trending. 

• Saban done at Alabama: If you don’t know by now, Nick Saban has packed it in and is going to go live the good life. Saban retired yesterday as the king of college football. What he has done may never be done again. 
• Belichick leaving New England: After 24 years, Bill Belichick will no longer be the head coach of the Patriots. Owner Robert Kraft and Belichick agreed to part ways after a 4-13 season. Belichick apparently still wants to coach and may wind up filling one of the open NFL vacancies like Atlanta.

• Carroll out in Seattle: On the same day Saban announced his retirement, the Seattle Seahawks and head coach Pete Carroll reached an agreement for Carroll to stay with the team as an adviser but he will no longer be the head coach. 

Start Watching College Basketball 

If you haven’t yet, start watching college basketball. Many sports fans and bettors are still stuck in their post-football funk. With the college football season over, the NFL playoffs are still here to give us some football. But, the college basketball season has hit conference play and we are seeing some March Madness in January.

Last night, two more top-5 teams lost in conference play. That means in the first three days of this week, four of the AP Top 5 teams in the nation all lost games. It’s only going to get crazier.

Here’s today’s schedule.

1. College basketball: No. 3 Kansas and No. 5 Tennessee were the victims last night. The Jayhawks lost to UCF 65-60 and the Vols dropped a 77-72 decision to Mississippi State. Tonight, we have another full schedule but only three ranked teams will take the court. No. 10 Illinois hosts Michigan State. No. 23 Gonzaga is at Santa Clara and No. 24 Florida Atlantic plays at Tulane.

2. NBA: It’s TNT doubleheader night and we’ve got a good one to start it off. It’ll be a playoff atmosphere in Milwaukee as the Bucks (25-12) host Boston (29-8) in a matchup of the top two teams in the Eastern Conference. The late game features the Suns and Lakers at Crypto.com Arena. The Nuggets are off tonight.
3. NHL: It’s a big night in the NHL with 13 games on tap. The feature game is Toronto at the New York Islanders on ESPN. The Bruins play the Golden Knights in Vegas tonight in a matchup of two of the top teams in the league.
4. Soccer: Wow! There are only 10 soccer matches around the world today. One of them in the Turkish Super Lig is already underway. 
5. Tennis: The ASB Classic and Adelaide International for both men and women continue today. The Hobart International also continues for the women today. The preliminary rounds of the Australian Open for both men and women continue today.

What a few days it has been. We’ve got Saban, Belichick and Carroll all out as head coaches. The interesting thing now will be to see who fills those jobs. Start looking around. You’ll find odds on the replacement for each of those legendary coaches. Our Sports Hub experts will certainly chime in on the subject. Stay tuned to Sports Hub for more on that topic as well as content on the upcoming NFL playoff weekend. There are over a dozen NFL picks in our database already. Bring it on back tomorrow and we’ll see how the best handicappers in the world fared once again. See you then!