The entire college football world is curious to know what the future holds for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Outside of Alabama football fans, there is a lot of interest in wishing the Crimson Tide demise. The hatred for Alabama is a small price to pay for a team with the greatest college football program of all time.
Looking to the future, Alabama football fans aren’t staring into the abyss of despair, but there are a somewhat unsettling number of unknowns surrounding the Cullen DeBoer era: Will Alabama simply stumble and fade, or will it surprise the college football world and continue its winning streak as usual?
One way to think about the answer to the above question is to ask another: To what extent does Alabama’s football history factor into its success in the Saban era and beyond? At best, we can only speculate.
The starting point for any speculation is that program history matters more at Alabama than any other college football program, for the simple reason that the Alabama Crimson Tide have accomplished more than any other college football program, and there is actual evidence for this assertion.
You can measure college football decades going back to the 1920s. About a year ago, Bill Connelly of ESPN calculated the best programs of each decade going back to the 1920s. He applied a slight modification of the SP+ calculation to the top teams of each decade. Connelly measured the decades in a 0-9 format. For example, 1920-1929 was the first decade Connelly included in his calculation.
