A Tennessee celebration is in order.

Pop the cork on the champagne. Drop the orange and white confetti. Chant “Beat Bama” till you’re hoarse. Break into Neyland Stadium, tear down the goal posts and dump them in the Tennessee River.

Alabama football coach Nick Saban is retiring. The news was first reported on ESPN and spread faster than Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe can run.

This isn’t good news for college football. It’s great news. And that’s another compliment to the greatest college football coach of all time.

The path to the SEC championship just became easier for everybody else. So did the road to the College Football Playoff for every SEC team with championship aspirations and a bountiful NIL fund.

Alabama won’t suddenly fall off the football map without Saban. Its place just won’t be as prominent without the coach who led it to six national championships, and won another at LSU before he couldn’t resist the lure of the NFL.

But college football was where he belonged, and he realized that after a short stint with the Miami Dolphins. You can’t recruit in the NFL. You draft and hope for the best.

Saban recruited relentlessly. Never mind how renowned he was as a defensive coach. Recruiting was what he did best. And no matter how much the game or the rules changed, he landed one championship recruiting class after another.

He didn’t just out-recruit almost everybody else on a yearly basis. He often outworked them.

Anybody who ever served as an assistant on his staff can tell stories about how hard Saban worked and how hard he required everyone else to work. In simpler times, before the NIL and transfer portal crowded every coach’s schedule, Saban’s staff probably had less time off than any other coaches. “Down time” wasn’t a part of its vocabulary.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart, once a longtime Saban defensive coordinator, is now “the coach” in college football. Maybe, he was already “the coach” after winning back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022.

Suddenly, Alabama is playing catchup just as it was more than 40 years ago.

I’ve been hitting the keyboard so long I can remember writing about Bear Bryant’s retirement following the 1982 season when I was a columnist in Baton Rouge. There were similarities between the two.

Both Bryant and Saban won six national championships at Alabama. Both oversaw dynasties. And both adjusted and adapted to whatever the sport threw at them.

I believe Bryant was the better tactician. But he couldn’t recruit as well as Saban. Who can?

Alabama was blessed to have both.

Saban was in better shape when he retired. So was his program. Sometimes, when I looked down at Bryant from a press box, I wondered if he would remain upright through the entire game. He died shortly after he retired.

If Saban had kept coaching, I wouldn’t have bet against his winning another national title. His Tide just beat a superior Georgia team for the SEC championship and lost to eventual national champion Michigan in overtime of a CFP semifinal. And if you already have read a way-too-early top-25 poll for 2024, I’m sure it included Alabama in the top four.

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Maybe, Alabama will hire another good coach. But it can’t expect to hire another Saban. Or another Bryant. That’s worth a celebration – or at least an extended sigh of relief − throughout the rest of the SEC.

Tennessee and Auburn, who play Alabama annually, should celebrate the loudest and longest.

John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: twitter.com/johnadamskns.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee should be celebrating Nick Saban retirement from Alabama