Saban Makes Us Believe

For about ten minutes on Saturday, September 15th, 2007, on a warm evening in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, it was 2003.
A twenty-one point lead...gone.
An inept offense...again.
A defense that made most stops...but not all of them.
We could only watch in the stands as Arkansas marched up and down the field like it was their own. Bryant-Denny stadium, rambunctious, proud, and loud as hell, had turned silent as the tomb where the legend himself resides.
"Who let Shula back?" I heard one fan say. I almost believed him.
Until I looked to the sidelines.
He isn't tall like Shula. He isn't gruff like the Bear. But Nick Saban has a fire. And I saw it in his eyes, that night, like I had seen it in every press conference, every TV appearance, every single frame in which the most powerful and questioned man in the entire state of Alabama had ever appeared; the unquenchable fire of a true champion.
Nick Saban and I have never met, but that night we did. For the first time, in that place, on that field, I felt the fire that now blazes through the entire football program here at my University of Alabama. I felt hope, and I knew that 2003 was just that; 2003. A past failure. A past regime. A past mistake. This was a new day, and with it was sprung a new hope.
First came a field goal.
Then came a stop.
Then came a touchdown.
I watched it happen, but it still boggles my mind. It was almost scripted in its perfection. This wasn't the Alabama I'm used to. This wasn't the Alabama that was always oh so close, yet oh so far. This was Alabama as the old geezers in Tide Pride knew it; the Alabama that never gets counted out. That never surrenders. That never dies. This was Alabama, as the Bear coached it.
All because of Mal Moore, maligned for the hire of the likes of DuBose, Franchione, Price, and Shula, all eager to take the challenge, but all, in their own way, failing.
Not this man. Not the Sabanator.
They ask me why he is different. He's coached three games for Alabama. How can I know anything?
I don't. But I believe.
I believe, simply because Saban leaves me no other choice.
"Be a Champion," he told us that January day he was introduced as Alabama's 27th Head Coach. The day he took the troubles, the trials, the tribulations of an entire state, placed it squarely on his shoulders, and said to those of us who starved for victory, for championships, for the pride we once held in ourselves, "Follow me, and we will reach the promised land."
Over-dramatic, perhaps. Perhaps not.
It's no secret that we Alabama fans love our football. We name our children after coaches. We schedule weddings around games. We wear our school colors like gang signs, base opinions of others on their allegiance, and don't give a damn if we do.
But Saban has done something I have never seen; he has made us love it for the future, and not for it's illustrious past.
Saban has made us believe again. And that is something worth more than a paltry $32 million.