Paul Finebaum Names Historic College Football Program That May Not Stay Among the Elite Much Longer

ESPN announcer Paul Finebaum before the SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. | Brett Davis-Imagn Images

The Alabama Crimson Tide has been the gold standard in college football for more than 100 years.

Alabama is the Gold Standard

The team has almost recorded 1,000 wins in program history. They've also won 15 national championships and 30 conference championships. They've also had some of the game's best coaches in Wallace Wade, Bear Bryant and Nick Saban.

They have also been the most recent dynasty in the sport under Saban. During his 17 seasons, Alabama went 206-29 and won six national championships.

However, Saban elected to retire following the 2023 season. He was replaced by Kalen DeBoer, who was fresh off of leading the Washington Huskies to a national championship game appearance.

DeBoer has done some good things in his two seasons, going 20-8. However, he hasn't gotten Alabama to being a serious national championship contender just yet.

That has some wondering if the program is starting to dip in the post-Saban era.

Alabama head football coach Kalen DeBoer watches players warm up before the College Football Playoff game. | SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Paul Finebaum Raises Concerns About Alabama's Future

In fact, ESPN's Paul Finebaum revealed on his show, "The Paul Finebaum Show," that he's not sure how much longer Alabama will be considered among the elites in the sport.

"I don't know how much longer Alabama will be among the elite," Finebaum said. "But last year they were up there."

That's not Finebaum predicting that Alabama will fall; that is just the reality. The likelihood that DeBoer or anyone can live up to what Bryant or Saban did is very low.

From 1997 to 2006, the team saw a big dip. During that time frame, the team had five seasons at .500 or below. They did have three double-digit-win seasons, but they weren't national championship contenders in any of them.

History Shows Program Cycles

It's also not unheard of for historic programs to go through a tough spell. The Nebraska Cornhuskers are going through that right now.

The Texas Longhorns did that in the 2010s, the Oklahoma Sooners in the 1990s and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish struggled from the mid-1990s through much of the 2000s.

In this new era of NIL, it could increase the chances of a historic program taking a step back, because if they don't get the coaching hire right and don't get the financial support, it'll be hard to compete.

No longer can programs benefit solely from their reputation; they must compete in the NIL world.

But Alabama's standard doesn't change with eras and rule shifts, and DeBoer's biggest challenge isn't rebuilding success; it's sustaining dominance in a landscape where maintaining it has become significantly harder.

Only time will tell.