It is human nature. When you get more, you expect even more. In life. In college football. And certainly when you play in the football-crazed SEC.

There is no way around it. What a wonderful “problem” to have.

At Alabama, over the past seven years, a fan base deep-fried in passion before 2009 and a program already steeped in tradition before 2009 has seemingly gotten more than it could have ever dreamed of. An unthinkable four national championships in seven years, adding hardware to a trophy case already overflowing with past glory.

But with this ridiculous pace of winning comes a price, right? It’s called a ridiculous expectation to win, and every year, with even incredibly higher standards than there were B.S. — Before Saban.

Just ask Mike Shula. And Dennis Franchione. And Mike DuBose. All were Bama coaches caught in between the iron fist of Gene Stallings and the iron curtain of Nick Saban, who all fell by the wayside without winning it all. Bama is one of those places that can carve you up and spit you out.

Unless you win, and do it consistently. But the thirst to win is never quenched at football mansions like Alabama. Nor should they be. Ask Saban about that one. Four titles in seven years, and in year eight, this fall, the expectation will be, more or less, to keep the championship train chugging.

But there are “the exception years” within a dynasty, right? Alabama didn’t win the championship in 2010, or 2013, or 2014. So that must mean there is a little wiggle room, small pockets to breathe for Saban, his coaching staff, his upperclassmen and his latest gem of a recruiting class?

Wrong. Those “exception years” are glossed over, as if they didn’t happen, as if they were year-long commercial breaks in the SEC’s near-decade program that’s been running on a seemingly endless reel called: “Alabama, The Championship Years.”

The Alabama Way: Reload, repeat

This is what happens when you win with such consistency, such ferocity, such focus and strength and unrelenting football savvy. And it’s particularly what happens when you do it at a place like Alabama.

Throw in another of those top-ranked recruiting classes this past February to spice up an already stacked returning roster in 2016, and you don’t get a mountain of expectations. You get an overflowing volcano.

Just look at the bold headline in all capital letters that tops this piece from Sports On Earth, which points out that Bama will lose a lot from last year’s title team but should still dominate and make another run at a College Football Playoff spot. All this as most Alabama fans say, “Well, of course!”

The headline reads: “ALABAMA LOADED FOR ANOTHER TITLE RUN.” Can it be more in your face than that?

Matt Brown’s Sports On Earth story ends with this fond postscript, which is the kind of thing that can sure bring those boastful Bama expectations down a few notches: “A Heisman winner and several other All-America and All-SEC players may be gone, but the Crimson Tide machine will roll on. There’s no reason to expect anything different.”

And there it is. Someone like Brown justifiably going with the Tide because going with the Tide has been the right call for so long, so why shouldn’t it be in 2016? Or next year, or the year after, for that matter? For as long as Saban stays put and the engine is still running like a champ.

But then there is the added weight of being a defending champion and trying to go the distance in back-to-back years. Brown hears that all right, but still writes:

“Alabama did it in 2011-12, but repeating is a tall task for even the most talented returning rosters — especially when the starting QB position is unclear, again. Still, Alabama has finished ranked in the top 10 in eight straight seasons. It has won four national titles in that time and made the playoff in each of its two years. Under Saban’s leadership, Alabama is the safest bet in college football on a yearly basis.”

Winning breeds confidence

That’s another thing winning does, and winning a string of titles over a lengthy period of time. It builds that wall of trust for not just rabid fans but also for the media, which has seen the Tide rise to the top so many times that it gives Bama the benefit of the doubt, even when it loses its starting quarterback from the year before and a Heisman Trophy bulldozer like Derrick Henry.

A foxsports.com blog draws on that “championship trust” once again. It explains that, you guessed it, Alabama is the odds-on favorite to win it all again, but also gives a history lesson on why Tide fans shouldn’t be worried about losing their latest Heisman hero.

“The Crimson Tide has had a successful history of replacing its leading rusher with another top-rated player under head coach Nick Saban going back to its previous Heisman winner Mark Ingram, who passed the torch to Trent Richardson,” writes Outkick the Coverage. “Eddie Lacy and T.J. Yeldon later followed, with all of them eventually getting drafted.”

So that automatically means Saban will turn the trick again, flip over the card and have an ace in the hole waiting on the other side? Well, yeah, probably.

This isn’t just magic dust working again and again though. Championship players turn things over to more championship players because they’re in a system, a program, with a coaching staff that knows how to turn its roster over time and again and end up with the same, wonderful result.

All these compliments mean one thing about managing expectations at Alabama: You really can’t. In the middle of an astonishing dynasty? No way. It just doesn’t seem possible, shouldn’t be possible.

What about the fact that Bama lost Kirby Smart, who will now be coaching against Saban at Georgia? Can Jeremy Pruitt just step in and be what Smart was, or close to it? Well, yeah, probably.

“Former Georgia defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt could essentially just exchange house keys with Smart,” wrote Barrett Sallee of bleacherreport.com, noting that Pruitt was on Saban’s staff for his first six seasons at Alabama and that he’s “fully capable” of filling Smart’s shoes.

And this: “From a recruiting standpoint, Pruitt is a grand slam. … What’s more, that kind of recruiting prowess could be beneficial in combating any advantage Smart has by moving to Georgia. Saban is living right.”

Well, that’s been pretty apparent for years now. Saban gets the best players. He even gets the best coordinators. And he knows how to manage all of those advantages and still win, which not every coach can do.

But the one thing Saban can never, ever manage are those insanely high expectations that just get loftier with each passing championship run. The guy who loves to control everything can’t control this, and not even close.

And when you keep fulfilling those expectations with glory and confetti and crystals, why should that even bother him?