Crimson Tide

Paul "Bear" Bryant came back to his old university in 1958. The 1966 side went 11–0 and still finished the year without the title it felt it had earned.

Gene Stallings closed the next long gap in 1992. Then came Nick Saban, who arrived in 2007 and by the time he left in 2023 had added six more national titles of his own, matching Bryant's tally and putting the program's total at 18. The 2011 championship came in the same year an EF4 tornado tore through Tuscaloosa, and the team's run that autumn became bound up with the city's recovery. Alabama has also collected 30 SEC titles along the way, a number no other program in the conference approaches.

What Alabama has sent beyond it matters just as much: Heisman winners Mark Ingram II, Derrick Henry, DeVonta Smith and Bryce Young all came through Tuscaloosa, and the program counts 43 Super Bowl champions among its alumni, a pipeline reason it gets called an NFL factory as often as it gets called a college team.