ATLANTA - Everybody starts somewhere. But what are the odds the opposing coaches for today's Southeastern Conference championship football game between Alabama and Missouri would have started in the same college program as both players and graduate assistants?
Moreover, what are the odds that 40 years later, the widow of their head coach at Kent State, Don James, would still call Bama's Nick Saban and Mizzou's Gary Pinkel "her boys"?
Added Pinkel during the SEC's coaches luncheon at the Hyatt Regency on Friday: "Just make sure you know Nick's a year older than I am."
Countered Saban: "Coach (James) always liked Gary best."
Because he spent the prime of his career at the University of Washington, the genius of James isn't necessarily on the lips of most of us down here in the Deep South. Never mind that he won 69 percent of his games (178-76-3) at Kent State and Washington, as well as the 1991 national championship with the Huskies.
But if Pinkel and Saban are any indication, the late James was a mentor on the order of Gen. Robert Neyland, Bear Bryant and Hayden Fry.
"I'm indebted to him forever," Pinkel said of James earlier this week. "We have a system in place built on many, many components of organization, attention to detail. He's had a tremendous influence on me."
Said Saban: "Don was one of the best coaches to me of all time. He was my coach, had a great impact on my life. I certainly appreciate him more than anyone could know for the start that he sort of inspired me to have as a coach. A lot of his influences really affected our coaching careers."
Pinkel will tell you he always wanted to coach after a trip to the Pittsburgh Steelers' camp as a rookie tight end didn't produce a roster spot.
"Coach James made me a GA (graduate assistant) and I thought, 'They're going to pay me to coach football?'" Pinkel noted during the coaches luncheon. "It's like I never worked a day in my life."
For Saban it was apparently anything but love at first sight.
"I never really wanted to be a coach," Saban said. "But Coach James asked me to be a graduate assistant. (Wife) Terry had another year of school, so I decided to do it, even though I didn't want to go to graduate school."
How well could James pick his GAs? The third grad assistant on the Kent State staff during the year Pinkel and Saban worked together was Dom Capers, currently the Green Bay Packers' defensive coordinator and the man who guided the Carolina Panthers to the NFC title game in only their second season in the NFL in 1996.
No one, of course, can match Saban at the moment. Along with former Notre Dame legend Frank Leahy, Bama icon Bryant and former Southern Cal coach John McKay, Saban is the only other coach of the past 75 years to win at least four national titles.
Given the Crimson Tide's current top ranking heading into this weekend in the playoff committee list, there's also little reason to believe he can't capture a fifth.
"He gives his team as much of an edge as any coach in college football," said former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, who now does color commentary for the SEC Network. "Everything is so black and white with Coach Saban. He sees the game so clearly. If I were another coach, I'd be taking notes because he's constantly adapting, changing, getting better. He's not to proud to say he won't change."
An example, from the coach's mouth: Always a stickler for fundamentals, Saban decided his obsession with tackling fundamentals this year -- "After all, the object of defense is to tackle the player with the ball," he said -- might be hurting the Tide against the no-huddle offenses everyone was running against them.
"So we worked on tempo a lot more this year," he said.
Pinkel admitted to not discussing football during the first five minutes of last year's pregame meetings with his players.
"Last year, we spent the first five minutes of every (pregame) meeting talking about how you treat a lady on a date," he said. "We do a thing called 'Missouri Made' here. It's about athletics, but it's also about character. It's something I first learned from Don James."
Tebow believes that if Pinkel wants to learn how to defeat Alabama today, he'll focus on an interesting set of stats involving those quarterbacks who've opposed Saban since he took over the Tide in 2007.
"When the opposing quarterback has rushed for less than 30 yards against Bama, those teams are 4-69 since Saban's been there," he said. "When the quarterback has run it 17 times or more, those teams are 4-2 against Alabama."
Missouri quarterback Maty Mauk is just under that yardage total for the season, averaging 28 rushing yards for the 10-2 Tigers. But he ran for 86 yards in a 29-21 win over Tennessee and for 75 yards in a 20-10 win over Kentucky, so he's capable.
"If Missouri's going to win, they have to take shots down field, their quarterback has to scramble and they cannot turn the ball over," Tebow said.
Asked what Alabama had to do to win, Tebow's SEC Network partner, Marcus Spears smiled and said, "Get the ball to (wideout) Amari Cooper."
As for the Tide quarterback who'll be asked to do that, senior Blake Sims has his own remarkable stat for the public to devour: Since 2004, only two SEC quarterbacks have had a higher QB rating than Sims, and they both won the Heisman Trophy -- Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel and Auburn's Cam Newton.
No one knows exactly what will happen when Bama and Missouri kick it off inside the Georgia Dome at 4 p.m., but Saban knows what might have happened if James hadn't long ago talked him into coaching.
"I worked at my dad's service station growing up," he said, "and my dream was probably to own my own car dealership. I always loved cars. I've learned something over the years, though. Every car dealer who's ever given me a car wants to be a college football coach."
Unless Pinkel can find a way to stop Cooper, his old friend and teammate Saban should improve to 9-1 in championship games of either the SEC or national variety since arriving at the Capstone. Make it Bama 27, Missouri 17.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com