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Alabama Coaching History
By Adam Spencer
Last Updated:
Alabama has one of the richest histories in college football. A big part of that is because the Crimson Tide have hired a pair of the greatest head coaches in the history of the sport — Paul “Bear” Bryant and Nick Saban.
When you’ve won 18 national championships in your history, you know you’ve made some good hires. A total of 5 coaches — Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings and Nick Saban — have won national titles while leading the Alabama program.
Below, you can see a complete coaching history of the Alabama Crimson Tide, along with some additional details of the greatest coaches throughout the years:
Alabama Coaching History
As you can see, it took a while before Alabama had any sort of stability in the coaching ranks. Like many programs, the Crimson Tide churned through coaches during the early days of organized football.
Wallace Wade, who coached in Tuscaloosa from 1923 to 1930, finally provided some stability, and with that, plenty of success. Wade coached the Tide to their first 3 national championships in 1925, 1926 and 1930.
His successor, Frank Thomas, led the Tide to the 1934 and 1945 championships. Bear Bryant won 6 titles in Tuscaloosa (more on that later). Gene Stallings led Alabama to the 1992 title and Nick Saban won the program’s 6 most-recent national championships.
Only 2 head coaches have coached Alabama for 25 or more games with a losing record — Jennings B. Whitworth (4-24-2) and Mike Shula (10-23).
Let’s go back to the positives, though, and discuss the legendary careers of Bear Bryant and Nick Saban.
Paul “Bear” Bryant (1958-82)
Bryant had already begun a very successful career before arriving at Alabama. He’d served as the head coach at Maryland (1945), Kentucky (1946-53) and Texas A&M (1954-57) in the years before he came to Tuscaloosa.
Of course, his time with the Tide was the stuff of legend. He won his first national championship in 1961, his fourth season on the job. It only took 3 more years to win again, in 1964. The Tide went back-to-back by winning in 1965, but then Bryant’s Tide endured a drought. They didn’t win title No. 4 until 1973. Bryant’s final 2 titles were also of the back-to-back variety in 1978 and 1979.
Sadly, after retiring following the 1982 season, Bryant passed away in January of 1983 at the age of 69. He finished his Alabama career with an incredible 205-42-9 overall record.
Nick Saban (2007-23)
Like Bryant, Saban had already had a lot of success before he was hired at Alabama. Unlike Bryant, that included a national title (2003 at LSU). That means that, in terms of national championships, Saban has the 7-6 edge over Bryant when you add in Saban’s 6 wins with the Tide.
Saban was a 5-time SEC Coach of the Year and won a slew of national coaching awards during his career. As of 2024, he’s a part of the College GameDay panel on ESPN, previewing the slate of college football games every week.
During his time with the Tide, Saban amassed a 201-29 record and a 117-18 mark in SEC play. That .877 winning percentage is the best of anyone who has ever coached multiple games at Alabama. After his retirement, Alabama officially named the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium “Nick Saban Field.”
His coaching tree also produced multiple top talents across the sport, including Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ole Miss’s Lane Kiffin, Texas’s Steve Sarkisian, former Florida State national champion Jimbo Fisher and many others. Saban’s legacy will be tough for anyone to replicate in the future. He was truly one of the greatest ever to walk a college football sideline.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
