Saban gives Alabama exactly what it hired him for with SEC West title

Nick Saban has led the Crimson Tide to their first SEC West title since 1999 in his second year in Tuscaloosa. Bill Frakes/SI Related Links No. 1 Alabama escapes LSU with OT victory Stewart Mandel's Mailbag Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Stewart Mandel on Twitter

BATON ROUGE, LA. -- This was precisely the moment Nick Saban was hired to achieve, the reason Alabama gave him a $32 million contract. But when Alabama clinched its first SEC championship game berth in nine years here Saturday on a 1-yard John Parker Wilson sneak in overtime, there were no celebrations for college football's master rebuilder.

First, Saban got to listen to several thousand LSU fans unleash an obscenity-laced chant with his name at the end of it. Then he jogged amidst a paparazzi-like throng of photographers to seek out and shake hands with a slew of remaining Tigers players whom he recruited. Then, flanked by roughly a dozen state troopers, he made a mad dash to the tunnel, giving a quick salute to the cheering Alabama contingent before disappearing under a white awning.

Twenty minutes after putting yet another dagger in the hearts of his once-adoring fans here with a dizzying 27-21 victory, Saban sat in an overflowing press conference and immediately did his best to kill the joy of his own team's fans, too.

"I'm worried about the next game, and the next game, and now there's going to be a next game after that [in Atlanta]," said Alabama's second-year coach. "We're at about 19,000 feet, and the mountain is about 26,000 feet. The air is getting a little rarer and you've got to change how you breathe some. If you slip up and don't focus on what you're supposed to, the consequences can be devastating."

And that was Saban being positive. His assessment of the Tide's performance here Saturday was considerably harsher -- not that you could blame him.

He'd just watched his team commit an uncharacteristic number of miscues -- three turnovers, several costly penalties and a blocked field-goal attempt that would have won the game in regulation -- that kept the Tide from putting away a pesky but overmatched opponent whose quarterback seemed bent on giving the ball (and the game) to the other team.

"I didn't think we played with the same level of intensity that we had been playing with," said Saban.

However, his team improved to 10-0. It avoided the upset fate of fellow unbeaten Penn State on Saturday and will remain the No. 1 team in the country for another week. And with woeful Mississippi State and Auburn their only remaining foes, both at home, the Tide are likely to stay there until at least early December.

Not bad for a team less than a year removed from losing to Louisiana-Monroe.

"I haven't been on a championship team since I was seven or eight years old," said center Antoine Caldwell. "To get there is great, but we're not finished yet."

LSU (6-3) had unofficially eliminated itself from title contention weeks earlier with its lopsided losses to Florida and Georgia. For Tigers fans, this was their Super Bowl. They'd been eying this game since the day their once revered coach went to the dark side 22 months ago, and they turned Death Valley into an even more menacing den than usual.

"You name it, I heard it," Saban said of his reception from the crowd. "But none of it was all that creative."

Neither was Alabama's game plan for beating the Tigers, which began and (nearly) ended with a heavy dose of tailback Glenn Coffee (26 carries, 126 yards). Unfortunately for the Tide, LSU had an answer for their running game throughout the first half, holding a team that averages 205.3 yards per game on the ground to just 53 on 13 attempts.

Meanwhile, on Alabama's first possession, receiver Earl Alexander turned an otherwise spectacular catch-and-run into a touchback for LSU when he got stripped trying to stretch the plane of the goal line. An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Wilson for doing the now ubiquitous cell-phone taunt after scoring the Tide's first touchdown and a fumble by kick returner Javier Arenas gave the Tigers short field for two first-quarter touchdowns -- two more than 'Bama had allowed in the first quarter its entire season.

"That was as lethargic a first half of football as we've played," said Saban. "We looked like a bunch of guys that were tired, and we looked that way in the locker room. I pulled several stomach muscles trying to get that straightened out."