Les Miles at LSU and so many coaches before him, Richt was fired because he wasn't Saban. He never so much as sniffed a national title, let alone five in a decade, and after three losses to Alabama in his last three tries, Georgia seemed to think he never would.

Mimicking the Crimson Tide's success doesn't stop with poaching coaches. Over the course of the past decade, every SEC school has undergone or is undergoing a multimillion-dollar facilities upgrade, including LSU's upcoming overhaul to its football operations building, originally constructed during Saban's final year in Baton Rouge.

All this with the goal of replicating the inimitable, of building a program that stands apart.

Working harder

By rule, the NCAA restricts head coaches to hiring 10 assistants, five strength coaches and four graduateassistants. But it doesn't say anything about other job titles.

Saban might not have been the first to identify the loophole, but he took the concept of an unregulated support staff and ran with it. Alabama now has more than 40 non-coaches listed on its staff directory, including 13 "analysts" and a cadre of athletic department staffers meant to amplify the program, including graphic designers and videographers.

Former offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin once joked that in his time at Alabama, he couldn't learn everyone's name. When Dabo Swinney went to Clemson, he made no bones about building out his staff. "Saban changed the game," he said. And two years ago, when Tom Herman took over at Texas, he boasted of getting "an army together."

The proliferation, though, has been starkest in