Has the ‘Alabama mystique’ gone?

The news that safety sensation Caleb Downs and starting offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor put themselves into the transfer portal a few days after the retirement of Nick Saban and the rehiring of Kalen DeBoer has made a lot of people ask the question: ‘Has the Alabama mystique gone?” Saban had the mystique – in the same way as any long-tenured, high-winning head coach (see Mssrs Bryant, Paterno, Spurrier, Meyer, Hayes, Schembechler and Smart for details) – does. When a team wins and wins and wins and wins and wins in the way that Alabama did under Saban’s time, it gets the reputation as a development factory for the NFL. Saban dined out on this while recruiting (He used to say:

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