College GameDay: Timing of Nick Saban retirement was ‘genius,’ beat death of blue-blood depth

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There were a lot of strong takes to come out of Monday night’s 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship game following No. 1 Indiana’s 27-21 win over No. 10 Miami. The victory was the culmination of the Hoosiers’ movie-script transformation in just two years under head coach Curt Cignetti, who secured college football’s first perfect 16-0 season in more than 125 years.

Among them was the question of whether these Hoosiers — a program that held the distinction of having college football’s most losses (715) entering the 2025 season — have what it takes to become the sport’s next great dynasty. And while that’s yet to be seen, ESPN insider Pete Thamel has his doubts.

And it has nothing to do with doubting the stability of what Cignetti has already built in Bloomington. Thamel simply doubts whether any program can build a consistent winner during this new age of college football, when money talks louder than brands and roster depth is all-but non-existent with NIL and the NCAA Transfer Portal.

“This is a harbinger of what college football is going to be. If there’s one conversation I’ve had in the last couple of weeks with coaches regarding the portal, (it’s) depth is dead,” Thamel said during Monday night’s post-CFP College GameDay Podcast. “Texas doesn’t have depth anymore, Georgia doesn’t have depth anymore, Ohio State had an exodus from the back-half of their roster and they’re not going to have depth anymore. … And that is just a symptom of the world we are in right now. Why were Nick(Saban’s) defensive lines such marauders at Alabama? Well he could just rotate in eight of them, and their seventh guy was better than Mississippi State’s second guy.

“That era, and that moment are gone and not coming back, and I do think the griping about depth will be one of the offseason hoppy horses that these coaches are going to bounce on. But to me, the absence of the quality depth at the bluest of blue bloods is indicative of why they’re not going to dominate anymore. Because you can’t stockpile the talent.”

Just ask Thamel’s ESPN College GameDay colleague Nick Saban, who abruptly retired following the 2023 season, his 17th at Alabama and just two years removed from playing for the 2021 CFP national championship. Thamel actually credited Saban for having the forethought to step away while his Crimson Tide dynasty was still going relatively strong.

“It’s why Nick’s genius, of the many geniuses of Nick Saban, is that he left college football at the exact perfect time,” Thamel added. “Because he was no longer able to stockpile the roster in the way he had when he won seven national championships. So, I think this is a historic night in a lot of ways, and it’s also a weather vein for where things are going in college football.”

And that weather vein is pointing in the direction of year-to-year parity that has effectively ushered in the end of college football’s dynastic era. Thamel believes no program will put together a run like Saban’s Alabama teams, which won three national championships in four years between 2009-12 and six in 12 years between 2009-20. That run also included nine total national title game appearances, including six in a seven-year span between 2015-21.

That sort of sustained success is unlikely to ever be seen again, let alone any time soon.

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