Nick Saban, master of preparation

In his Monday press conference, Alabama football coach Nick Saban was asked about how the fact that Arkansas is coming off a bye week might affect Saturday's game between the Crimson Tide and Razorbacks. Saban pointed out (as several others, including myself have also done) that Arkansas is in fact one of five teams that will be coming off bye weeks when it faces the Crimson Tide this season (Florida State, LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn are the others).

Saban noted that it "might make an interesting research project for someone" to look up how his teams had done through the years when coming off bye weeks. Done.

As a college coach, Saban and his teams are 8-5 when coming off bye weeks. Incidentally, Arkansas' Houston Nutt is 8-7 as Razorbacks head coach when coming off bye weeks.

But I thought it was far more interesting (and relevant for this week) to research how Saban's teams had done against teams coming off bye weeks. The results were startling.

In 11 seasons as a college head coach, Saban is 11-3-1 against teams that had a bye week the week before they faced his team (not counting season-openers and bowl games). In only two of those cases did Saban's team have a bye week as well the previous week.

The complete list:

at Michigan State
9/23/95 --- at Purdue --- T, 35-35
9/30/95 --- Boston College --- W, 25-21
11/11/95 --- at Indiana --- W, 31-13
10/5/96 --- at Iowa --- L, 37-30
11/9/96 --- Indiana --- W, 38-15
11/21/98 --- Illinois --- W, 41-9
10/2/99 --- Iowa --- W, 49-3

at LSU
10/21/00 --- Mississippi State --- W, 45-38 (OT)
9/29/01 --- at Tennessee --- L, 26-18*
11/3/01 --- at Alabama --- W, 35-21
12/1/01 --- Auburn --- W, 27-14*
10/5/02 --- La-Lafayette --- W, 48-0
11/23/02 --- Ole Miss --- W, 14-13
11/22/03 --- at Ole Miss --- W, 17-14
10/2/04 --- at Georgia --- L, 45-16

* --- Saban's team also had bye the previous week

You'll note that all three losses and the tie came on the road. Kind of bodes well for the Crimson Tide against Arkansas this weekend, wouldn't you think?