Like Father, Like Son: For Nick Saban, There's No Greater Compliment

MONONGAH, West Virginia —He found the five garages nearly 45 years ago, tucked behind old houses on a stretch of Miner's Row. Five garages packed floor to ceiling with what appeared to be useless throwaways to just about everyone else but would come to mean everything to the young man who had just driven home to bury his father.

No one knew about the garages and what his father had stored in them, Alabama coach Nick Saban says now. But he was determined to find out.

Times were tough in the early 1970s in those small mining towns up and down State Road 218. There were strikes at the mine, and when you're trying to raise a family and there's no food on the table and nothing makes sense anymore,…