AFTER BULLDOGS WINING THEIR CHAMPIONSHIP AND THEIR HEAD COACH WAS …….
Alabama college football head Nick Saban announced his retirement Wednesday afternoon after a 17-year run with the Tide and a more than 30-year career in coaching. During his time at Alabama, Saban led The Tide to a historic six national title victories and propelled the Alabama football program as the “gold standard” of college football.
With such massive news taking place in the college football world, multiple teams and coaching staffs are bound to be affected. But there is one team that may be most affected by this news in particular.
As arguably Saban’s most successful apprentice, Kirby Smart has modeled his Georgia Bulldog team in a way that is eerily similar to that of the Alabama powerhouse. Smart’s detail-oriented coaching style and elite recruiting quickly aided him in becoming one of the top-ranked coaches in the sport of college football where he won back-to-back national titles and a handful of SEC East titles.
Another potentially positive outcome of this news is that a handful of extremely talented players will likely enter the transfer portal in the wake of the news—players from Georgia such as Justice Haynes and Caleb Downs whom the Bulldogs recruited heavily prior to their commitment to Alabama.
One of the more negative effects of this news, however, is that the departure of Nick Saban now leaves a massive coaching spot open to be filled. One name that has begun to swirl around is Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann. Schumann, a graduate of the University of Alabama served as an assistant coach under Saban for a handful of years.
Before coming to Georgia, Schumann was a coach alongside both Kirby Smart and Saban at Alabama for nine years. He is also a graduate from the University of Alabama. While with the Crimson Tide, Schumann served as a student assistant for a few years, which then led him into a graduate assistant role and later would be named the linebackers coach under Smart who was the defensive coordinator there at the time.
Schumann made the transition to Georgia with Smart in 2016, and has remained loyal to the program ever since. However, due to the Bulldogs’ recent success, specifically on the defensive side of the ball, many began to wonder when Schumann would get an opportunity of his own.
Last offseason in 2023, a discussion sparked up about the Philadelphia Eagles reaching out to Schumann about becoming their defensive coordinator. In early February it would be announced that the Georgia defensive coach elected to stay in Athens and not make the jump to the NFL.
Right before the start of the 2023 college football season, Schumann talked about why he has continued to stay at Georgia and not take another job. Here is what he said:
The Alabama head coaching search will be one of the more prominent topics in the news cycle until the Crimson Tide ultimately makes a decision. As mentioned before, a lot of names are already being thrown into the mix, so only time will tell who the legitimate candidates will be, and if Schumann’s name will be in the running.