Sometime in the middle of last season—which, like the previous season, ended with Alabama winning college football's national title—the popular sports-radio host Paul Finebaum was filling up his car at a gas station in Alabama.

A listener stopped him to say three things. The first was "Roll Tide." The second was that Nick Saban becoming the coach of the Crimson Tide was one of the greatest things that had ever happened in his life. The third was something Finebaum wasn't used to hearing: "To be perfectly honest...