If Alabama wins another championship, where will this team rank in Tide history?

When comparing the participants in Monday night’s title game against their own program histories, Clemson is straightforward. The Tigers have won one national title in school history. So if the 2015 Tigers win it all, there’s really only one team against which to compare them.

Sure enough, the SRS rating agrees, as it has 1981 and 2015 as the two best years in school history. Right now, the ‘81 Tigers would be a two-point favorite over the ‘15 Tigers, a number that would surely shrink if Dabo’s troops upset Alabama in Glendale.

For Alabama -- 15-championship-claimin’ Alabama -- the question is not so simple. Even with silly accounting, the Tide have a bevy of title teams against which the 2015 edition can be compared, if it beats Clemson.

A win on Monday would give Saban his fourth national championship in Tuscaloosa and his fifth overall. So far, how does this team compare to the 2009, 2011 and 2012 teams that forced Nick to smile while hoisting crystal balls? Let’s go to the fancy math:

This team compares favorably. Its F/+ rating is better than those of the 2009 and 2011 teams. With a strong performance against Clemson, this team could end up the best of the bunch, according to the numbers. And Bama is No. 1 in both S&P+ and FEI (unlike the 2009 and 2011 teams), so there is no dispute between the components right now.

On the other hand, 2015 Alabama has a weakness that its predecessors did not: an underwhelming offense. The previous teams were all top-11 on offense in both metrics. This year’s ranks in the 20s. It may not matter, because this Bama defense is on the level of the previous champs, but it’s fair to say that this Alabama team is not as complete as Saban’s previous title winners.

What if we compare the 2015 team to Bama’s pre-Saban champions? For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll go ahead and include all claimed championships, legit and otherwise.

We’re also shifting from F/+, S&P and FEI, which only go back to 2005, to SRS, which goes back as far as we need. To the chart!

Bama had a 21.24 SRS rating going into the Michigan State game, so that win bumped the Tide up by 2.33 points. Bama might not need to beat Clemson by 38 to get a similar jump, because the Tigers have a better rating than the Spartans did. But all this Bama team would need is a one-point jump to become the best of the four Saban title teams at Alabama, which seems likely.

A win over Clemson could put the 2015 Tide within shouting distance of the best of Bama’s AP Poll national champions, according to SRS: the 1978 team. (The ‘73 team is marginally ahead of the ‘78 team according to SRS, but that team did not win an AP national title because of that pass to Robin Weber.)That team is most famous for this:

The ‘78 Tide played a big boy schedule, the kind we just don’t see much of anymore. The ‘78 and ‘15 teams have almost the same rankings in strength of schedule, but the average opponent for the ‘78 Tide was over five points better. The ‘78 team played only six conference games, but its non-conference schedule was sick: Washington and Missouri on the road, USC, Nebraska and Virginia Tech at home. You won’t see Middle Tennessee, Charleston Southern or Louisiana-Monroe on that slate.

This isn’t a criticism of Saban. The model for most major programs now is to only play one big non-conference opponent, so Bama is not outside of the norm, as evidenced by the fact that the Tide are No. 4 in strength of schedule going into the title game. Saban has advocated for Power 5 teams only playing one another, so he has clean hands on this topic.

While Saban’s teams have played schedules with more filler, the advantage that he has over Bryant is coaching in an era in which his teams get to play in No. 1 vs. No. 2 games. Every one of Saban’s title teams has ended the season playing the other team in the top two.

Bryant coached in an era when bowl selection was anarchic. Sometimes, Bama played top bowl opponents (SRS No. 5 Texas in ‘64, No. 4 Penn State in ‘78, No. 5 Arkansas in ‘79) and sometimes it didn’t (No. 13 Arkansas in ‘61, No. 8 Nebraska in ‘65).

Because Bryant’s Bama teams were deprived of the chance to knock out a direct competitor, only one of his five AP national champions finished No. 1 in SRS. The BCS benefits Saban in historical discussions because it gave his teams the opportunity to play against the very best; the Playoff amplifies this. And maybe the Bear would not have liked a four-team playoff in 1978, since the Tide would have played USC in the final, the same USC team that beat Bama by 10 in Birmingham that season.

If Saban’s team puts in a good performance in the Championship, it will occupy a spot equal to any of his prior title winners. If it puts in a great performance, it could find itself rubbing shoulders with the best of Bryant’s teams. Then the comparisons between Saban and the Bear can really start flying.

Or the Tigers could render all this moot by rewriting their own history instead.