BEREA, Ohio — Trent Richardson would be surprised if Nick Saban followed him from Alabama to the Cleveland Browns.
    Saban, who will lead the Crimson Tide against Notre Dame in the BCS national championship game in Miami on Jan. 7, has been mentioned as returning to the NFL, perhaps with the Browns if second-year coach Pat Shurmur is fired at season's end.
    "I can't see him coming to the NFL," Richardson said Wednesday. "I would be very shocked."
    And Richardson knows the coach quite well. After all, he was a standout running back for Saban at Alabama before being selected in the first round by Cleveland in April. Richardson ran for 1,679 yards last season for the Crimson Tide.
    "How can you get tired of winning," Richardson asked. "He's got so much going there. He has no reason to leave. He gets what he needs and he treats his program like the NFL (anyway). He makes sure his players are prepared for the game and prepared for the next level when the time comes."
    Any exit to the NFL wouldn't be foreign to Saban, who led Alabama to national titles in 2009 and 2011. He left his post at LSU, in fact, to become coach of the Miami Dolphins in 2005. After going 15-17 in two seasons there, he went back to the SEC, this time in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Notre Dame's Kelly named CotY
    SOUTH BEND, Ind. — After two seasons as Notre Dame coach, Brian Kelly decided he wasn't spending enough time doing the best part of his job: coaching players.
    Kelly changed that in 2012, and he shuffled his staff. Then, with Kelly more in tune to his team and the assistants in sync with the head coach, Notre Dame went from unranked to top-ranked.
    For leading the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship for the first time, Kelly was voted Associated Press college football coach of the year.
    "When you're talking about the coach of the year, there's so many things that go into it," Kelly said. "I know it's an individual award and it goes to one guy, but the feelings that I get from it is you're building the right staff, that you've got the right players and to me that is a validation of the program. That you put together the right business plan."
    Penn State's Bill O'Brien was second with 14 votes.