Nick Saban Field a good start, but not enough for legendary Alabama Football coach

Legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban will have the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium renamed in his honor on Saturday during a ceremony at halftime of the Crimson Tide's matchup with South Florida. Moving forward, Alabama will play on Nick Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

On Thursday, Saban called this an "honor of a lifetime", as the University of Alabama's Board of Trustees officially passed the resolution of the re-naming of the field. Respectfully, however, renaming the field is not nearly enough to honor the greatest coach in the history of the sport.

The masses will still refer to it as Bryant-Denny - not Saban Field. And nobody is spitting out the mouthful that is "Nick Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium (or NSFBDS for short).

We all know Saban's accolades while manning the sideline in Tuscaloosa. 17 years, six national championshps, 10 SEC Championships, 201 wins, 13-straight 11-win seasons, four Heisman Trophy winners, countless All-Americans and first round draft picks. The man took a job with an enormous houndstooth shadow and somehow left casting an even bigger shadow himself. Houndstooth fedora's have been replaced by straw hats.

It would have been sacreligious to say 17 years ago that Saban would surpass The Bear. Coach Bryant was considered by many to be the greatest coach in college football history after all, and houndstooth became a primary color for the Tide, joining the crimson and white. You'd be less likely to start a fight by insulting a man's wife than taking Bryant's name in vain.

Even after Saban won his first of six national titles during his time in Tuscaloosa, it would have been unthinkable to anyone that he'd leave more revered. After the back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012, some chatter began, but he was still only halfway to Coach Bryant's total at Alabama. But he won another, and another, and another, ultimately tying Bryant's six national titles with the Tide, and one-upping him overall by counting the one he won at LSU in 2003.

Frankly, the stadium itself should bear Saban's name. Call it Bryant-Denny-Saban Stadium, or, due respect to George H. Denny, Bryant-Saban Stadium (or Saban-Bryant to avoid the unfortunte abbreviation.) Denny still has the chimes - Saban should have the stadium. After all, it is the place that Saban (re)built.

We all remember the dark days of Tide fandom, extending from the end of the Gene Stallings era all the way through the Mike's and Dennis. Alabama had become an afterthought in the college football universe. Alabama was a has-been, and could've easily been headed toward the type of irrelevance in modern-day college football that has plagued the likes of Nebraska and Miami.

Instead, Saban reinvigorated a dormant program and didn't just win, but made Alabama into the gold standard of college football that everyone else is measured against. He re-invented himself multiple times through the era, going from the ground-and-pound defensive juggurnaut that was the 2008-2013 Tide teams, to the explosive offenses that spawned the careers of current NFL quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, and Bryce Young.

That's not even to mention that all Saban has meant to Tuscaloosa - and the entire state of Alabama - as a whole. To say Saban left Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama better than he found it would be an understatement. He saved the program from irrelevance, and put it in a position to sustain excellence moving forward even with a different coach occupying his old office on Bryant Drive.

Really, whatever the University chooses to do in the future to honor Saban won't feel like enough. They could rename the stadium, the city, call Alabama the "Fightin' Sabans" instead of the Crimson Tide, and it still wouldn't come close to matching the impact he had in Tuscaloosa.