This is an opinion column.

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Feeling ambitious, Nick Saban left college football for the NFL when he was 53 years old. It didn’t take long for Saban to figure out that he had it made back on campus.

Leaving the Miami Dolphins for Tuscaloosa was the best decision he ever made, but trading the studio for the sideline at the dawn of college football’s pay-for-play era was a pretty good one, too.

On Thursday, Saban will be back inside the NFL’s orbit for the first time in 21 years. He’s now a football analyst for ESPN and he’ll be helping the network break down the NFL Draft. Few understand the draft better. He has put more players in the first round than any other coach.

The number stands at 49 total, but more are expected to join the list with Saban’s final draft class.

At Alabama, Saban built an empire with future NFL talent. Why did he leave the NFL for college football? NFL teams have one first-round pick every year, he would say, but at the college level Saban could stockpile first-round talent like bars of gold in Fort Knox.

It kept the Crimson Tide in contention for a national championship every season for 16 consecutive years.

RELATED: AL.com mock NFL Draft

Saban’s total of first-round draft picks while at Alabama stands at 44, but more names will join the list with the 2024 draft class. Pass rusher Dallas Turner is expected to be the first player from Alabama taken off the board. Offensive lineman JC Latham and cornerbacks Terrion Arnold and Kool-Aid McKinstry could also go in the first round.

Saban’s power as a recruiter shaped the NFL and changed the game of college football. The best players in the country flocked to Alabama and then to the SEC. It titled the entire axis of the football world towards the South. I’ll never forget former Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who is from Hawaii, tell the story of how his father made him pick Saban’s Alabama over USC.

Father Tagovailoa knew what was best, though. Son Tua went in the first round despite a devastating hip injury and now he’s expected to sign one of the largest deals in NFL history.

Quarterback Bryce Young of California followed Tua to Alabama and became Alabama’s first No.1 pick since Woodlawn High’s Harry Gilmer in 1948. At that point, the elite players from the West Coast all felt like they had to either attend Alabama or a school in the SEC.

It was Saban’s Alabama that motivated California governor Gavin Newsome to sign into law the first NIL bill for college athletes in American history. Don’t let anyone ever forget it.

The modern game was forced to change again and again to account for Saban’s reign at Alabama.

Finally, after giving players a chance to transfer after every season for cash, the game was able to put a governor on Saban’s Ferrari of a football program.

Some of my favorite players at Alabama during the Saban years weren’t even first-round picks. Saban has had eight defensive backs represent Alabama on the big stage, but no one will ever be able to tell me fourth-round pick Eddie Jackson wasn’t better than all of them.

Jackson represents one of the biggest what-if questions in the history of Saban times at Alabama. Had he not suffered a broken leg during the 2016 season, then I am certain Alabama would have taken down Clemson once again for back-to-back national championships.

Of course, the same can be said for the injury to second-round receiver John Metchie III, too — another one of my all-time favorites.

It was Metchie who delivered one of the greatest plays in the history of Alabama football, and he did it with a hit and not catching a pass.

Saban’s run of first-round picks at Alabama changed everything. Given the changing dynamics of college football, it’s a record that may never be broken. Then again, teams like Texas A&M and Ohio State might just buy up all the first-round talent from here on out and pay for the value that Saban gave Alabama with his ability as a recruiter.

Saban recruited players on Thanksgiving of 2020 while dealing with a case of COVID-19. He complained about the timing of national championship games because he thought it interfered with his ability to sell players on Alabama. Now the bottom line of NIL collectives are all that matter.

It’s a different game without Saban. It’s a different Alabama, and new coach Kalen DeBoer can’t be expected to maintain a level of dominance in recruiting that Saban knew was slipping away.

Alabama isn’t for everyone, Saban would tell the recruits. Only the toughest of the best could survive. Then the first round was the biggest recruiting tool of all.

It was a machine, and it built Alabama into a standard-bearer of opulence the game will probably never see again.

SOUND OFF

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the most controversial sports book ever written, “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”