TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Kalen DeBoer taps on the glass coffee table before him.
“This used to have rings on it, didn’t it?” he asks.
Few items in Nick Saban’s former office at Alabama were more memorable than that coffee table — the centerpiece of a sitting area adjacent to his expansive wooden desk, the resting place for dozens of bowl and championship rings, the gilded keepsakes stacked atop one another in their velvet jewelry boxes to form the ingredients for the sport’s best recruiting pitch.
Nestled between a pair of cushioned arm chairs and a brown leather couch, the varnished wooden coffee table displayed nearly two decades of history, artifacts from perhaps the greatest dynasty that college football has ever seen — a dominant stretch of time that featured 201 victories, nine SEC titles and six national championships.