TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — If the mob scene upon his arrival at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport on Jan. 3 didn’t clue him in, the 92, 000 fans at Alabama’s spring football scrimmage drove home the point to Nick Saban: The Crimson Tide masses are ready to win again — now.

To them, Nick Saban arrived as the deliverer. He is to resurrect the championship mentality at Bryant-Denny Stadium. He is to rule Alabama football firmly, out of the reach of the fractious personalities that have racked the program with dysfunction for most of the past 25 years.

He is to deliver championships to the titlestarved Crimson Tide. If he is unable to do that, just like his four predecessors — with the exception of the 1999 SEC championship by Mike DuBose, who was fired the following season — he can scram.

When your employer skews the college football pay scale to lure you away from wealthy Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga, the demands are expected to be delivered in proportion to the dollars.

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Saban knows exactly why he was pursued by desperate Alabama Athletic Director Mal Moore, who signed him to a guaranteed $ 32 million over eight years after four nerveracking weeks of waiting for the Dolphins’ season to end last winter.

“I understand the expectations, but I also understand what it takes to accomplish those things,” Saban said during spring practice. “The process and procedure of what you have to do to get where you want to go. It just doesn’t happen by waving a wand.”

Saban’s first Alabama team is 2-0, with dominating victories over Western Carolina and Vanderbilt under its belt. The Crimson Tide gets its first significant test Saturday when No. 16 Arkansas comes calling at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Saban had a 3-2 record against Arkansas as LSU’s head coach from 2000-2004.

“I know what he’s bringing to the table,” Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt said. “[Alabama ] is wellcoached. They are going to be very disciplined. They are tough, and they have a lot of confidence going right now.”

Saban led LSU to the 2003 national championship and took over at Miami in 2005 for a reported $ 4. 5 million per year for five years. After two years with the Dolphins, Saban inherited an Alabama program that had in the past dozen years been bruised twice by its own hands through NCAA investigations and sanctions, and fallen into mediocrity.

Alabama’s record the past 10 seasons — 69-55, for a winning percentage of. 556 — ranked seventh in the SEC over that span. Arkansas has done better in that time period with a record of 72-51 (. 585 ), and has outperformed the Crimson Tide in the past five years.

Alabama has had back-to-back winning seasons only twice since Gene Stallings’ departure in 1996, and the last of those occurred three coaches ago, when Dennis Franchione’s teams went 7-5 in 2001 and 10-3 in 2002.

Franchione was disturbed by several facets of the program: meddling administrators, an underestimation of the projected NCAA sanctions Alabama was slapped with in 2002, and a lack of progress in what he felt was longoverdue facilities upgrades.

Franchione bolted for Texas A&M after his two successful seasons, but the tumult continued at Alabama.

Mike Price’s embarrassing dismissal five months after he was hired, after a night of poor judgment involving drinking and strippers in Pensacola, Fla., led to the stop-gap hiring of alumnus Mike Shula, who proved not ready for prime time as an SEC head coach.

Shula’s four teams went 26-23, with one winning season, and were labeled as a bit soft, a pass-oriented team that emphasized finesse over force. Saban has brought the smash-mouth back to Alabama football.

“Their identity goes directly through their offensive line,” said David Archer, a former NFL quarterback who does color commentary for Lincoln Financial Sports, which broadcasts SEC games. “Their offensive line was dominant [against Vanderbilt last week ] and I didn’t see that last year.”

Another aspect emphasized by Saban is team fitness. Saban’s Fourth Quarter winter conditioning program is considered vastly superior to that used by the teams under Shula, which were fourthquarter busts. The Crimson Tide never won a game under Shula in which it was trailing entering the fourth quarter.

“He knows games are decided in the fourth quarter, and they certainly looked fresh in the fourth quarter,” Archer said. “They didn’t really get challenged, though.”

Alabama’s team leaders have vouched for Saban’s no-nonsense approach to running a football organization.

“I remember Coach Mal Moore telling me when the whole situation went down last year, we’re going to get a guy here who’s going to be a proven winner,” senior defensive end Wallace Gilberry said. “That’s exactly what they did. They went out and got a proven winner.

“ I talked to guys at LSU, guys who played under Coach Saban, and he’s definitely a guy who instills morals in you that go beyond football.”

Senior offensive guard Justin Britt is the third and last of a family line of football-playing brothers at Alabama that dates to the DuBose era. He wishes his college career was just beginning.

“I would love to be a freshman right now,” Britt said. “He knows every single aspect of college football. He knows what he wants from the grass on the field to the weight room to the classroom. He knows what it takes to be great and he provides that for us. He provides us a plan to be great. The freshmen are lucky. They’ve got it laid out for them.

“ A lot of players hadn’t reached their full potential, so to speak, as players in the past. I don’t think that’s going to be possible now. I think everyone’s going to reach their full potential or they won’t be out here.”

Saban has tried not to critique the state of the program he inherited.

“You try to build off of what you have and make it better and better,” he said in an April interview. “That’s what we’re trying to do.

“ It is what it is, is all I can say. I’m not saying it is what it should be, I’m not saying it’s what it could be and it’s certainly not what it was. It is what it is, and that’s what we have to deal with.”