It’s the end of an era for NFL and college football coaches, many of whom have spent most of this millennium chasing Bill Belichick, Pete Caroll and Nick Saban.
Friends, rivals, colleagues and all descendants of Croatian immigrants, the three side legends entered the business half a century earlier, but see their careers seemingly come to an end this week.
Saban is retiring from Alabama and Carroll is entering semi-retirement to take on an advisory role with the Seattle Seahawks, while Belichick could opt to continue coaching after mutually agreeing to part ways with the New England Patriots.
But whatever happens, this week marks a major transition within the sport. Together, the trio has won nine Super Bowls, nine national championships and 912 games, not including those that led Carroll to leave USC after his players were found to have received inappropriate gifts.
Together, Saban and Carroll coached seven Heisman winners, including USC’s Reggie Bush, who was ultimately forced to relinquish his award due to the aforementioned inappropriate gifts. Meanwhile, Belichick was the Patriots coach for each of Tom Brady’s three NFL MVP awards.
Pete Carroll (left) is seen after taking the Patriots job in 1997. (Right) Then-Dolphins coach Nick Saban talks with Bill Belichick in 2006
Belichick and Carroll exchange pleasantries after the Seahawks defeated the Patriots in 2016
In some cases their success was shared.
Twenty years ago, Carroll’s USC Trojans and Saban’s LSU Tigers became the last two college football teams to split a national championship, giving way to the BCS era and eventually the current College Football Playoff format.
Saban once replaced Caroll on Earle Bruce’s coaching staff at Ohio State in 1980, moving from West Virginia before holding similar defensive assistant positions at Navy, Michigan State and with the NFL’s Houston Oilers before becoming head coach at Toledo in 1990 .
The following year, Saban received a job offer from a new Cleveland Browns coach, who had won a pair of Super Bowls as the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants under another legend, Bill Parcells.
At 39 years old, Belichick was faced with significant expectations from a once-proud Browns franchise. But even though he inherited a roster that included quarterback Bernie Kosar, receiver Webster Slaughter and pulverizing defensive tackle Michael Dean Perry, the results weren’t there.
Belichick’s Browns reached the playoffs just once during his five-year tenure and he was ultimately fired when the team moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens.
He would reemerge under Parcells with the Patriots in 1996, help New England reach its second-ever Super Bowl, and spend three years under his old boss with the New York Jets.
But even though he was expected to inherit Parcells’ job, and officially did so all day, Belichick got cold feet amid the Jets’ uncertain ownership situation. Johnson & Johnson heir Woody Johnon tried to buy the team, and instead of waiting for that to happen, Belichick accepted a position to coach the New England Patriots – a team that had just fired their coach, Pete Carroll.
Carroll, who had previously coached the Jets for a season and later replaced Parcells in New England, had gone just 27-21 with the Patriots while failing to reach the postseason.
He was fired after the 1999 season before resurfacing at USC in 2001 and taking over a once-proud program that had nine national championships.
The Trojans would go on to define college football for the next decade, winning two national titles and regularly ranking among the best teams in the country.
But after years of turning down NFL job offers, Carroll finally agreed to take the Seattle Seahawks job in 2010, opening the door for Saban’s dynasty at Alabama.
He had already won a national title at LSU in 2003, but after a forgettable two-year stint as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Saban turned Alabama into a juggernaut, winning six titles over the next eleven seasons.
His success was unparalleled at the college level, although Belichick had a similar run at Foxboro.
The two had known each other since the early 1980s, when their fathers coached together in the Navy, and remained close even as they developed reputations as isolated, cantankerous curmudgeons.
“There is no one I have more respect for in football than Nick Saban – period,” Belichick said in 2018.
“Look, it’s obviously flattering to be compared to Nick and the great success he’s had there,” Belichick said. “Given the way his team has performed, I don’t think anyone has done better than him. I think probably every coach in football tries to do as well as he does and has done. But they are doing fantastic there, Nick is a great coach.’
The two even had an annual date at Alabama’s pro day, where Belichick and other NFL coaches and scouts would evaluate the Crimson Tide talent.
“We talk on the phone,” Saban said of Belichick in 2022. ‘Every now and then we do something together, like golf or something, but this is really fun.
‘Bill arrived here yesterday and was allowed to attend the training. This morning we had to spend time together, catch up. Not only about football-related matters and players, but also about family and things like that. I think sometimes people who are our fans don’t look at us as if we even have that role.”
Belichick’s relationship with Carroll is complicated by their head-to-head games — most notably Super Bowl XLIX, in which the Patriots defeated the Seahawks 28-24 on a late interception by New England cornerback Malcolm Butler.
Carroll, who had already won a Super Bowl the year before, was criticized for the result because of the team’s decision to pass the ball to the goal line instead of running the ball with fearsome halfback Marshawn Lynch.
Despite the criticism, Carroll remained head coach in Seattle until this week.
“I think the fact that we’re still coaching and our paths are still crossing means we’ve done a pretty good job, otherwise someone would have replaced us,” Belichick told reporters in 2020.
The two are actually friends, although Carroll doesn’t share Belichick’s stern attitude.
“The biggest difference is one has a smile on his face, one doesn’t, but the ultimate goal is to win championships, and both love to win,” former NFL safety Milloy, who played for both coaches, told Seahawks.com in 2020. ‘To be a good head coach, you have to be a great facilitator to build the right atmosphere; those guys both do that.”
And by the way, so did Saban in Tuscaloosa, until this week, when the world of football changed forever.