Hot Take: Expectations at every blue blood and wannabe blue blood are extremely high and if a coach isn’t competing for Nattys year in, year out, they are on the hot seat. Ask Ryan Day, Harbaugh before Connor Stallions, Lincoln Riley at SC, every coach at Texas, Venables after year one at OU, Taggart at FSU, Jimbo at aTm, Coach O at LSU, etc.Hot take: The Alabama job is a poison chalice for anyone who directly succeeds Saban. It's a great program with all the resources you can possibly want, but realistically the chance that you fail there is absurdly high as whoever takes it will be measured by the standards Saban set and failing to meet those standards has driven influential people across the SEC nuts over the last decade and resulted in some very irrational decisions. When people who cast a shadow as large as the one Saban casts and who have held their roles for as long as Saban has leave their roles the direct successor usually fails and does so quickly. And in the SEC everything is on steroids.
While it’s logical, I think too much is being made of this narrative at the moment. Alabama is a turnkey national championship job for a great coach. Yes, that guy will have to win big in short order, but that’s the case at every top program serious about winning Nattys