Saban's tenure was marred, I believe, by complaints from players that he brought a collegiate atmosphere to the locker room and promptly bailed when the going got tough in the pro ranks because he couldn't get the players he wanted.
Meyer has immediately done that. He's complained about the free agent period quite loudly in the media and I'm not sure what he said about the draft process, but I got the feeling he wasn't the biggest fan. Which is too bad for him. He's signed up for the pros.
He might last as long as Saban. These guys are so used to winning and getting what they want that the pros are just a totally different and foreign game to them. Their attitudes do not match the pro game. The only guy I can remember that made the transition from an exorbitant ego coaching the college game to coaching pros was what Coach K did in basketball at the international level, but he made a tone of concessions and assuaged egos that normally would have run every other coach out of the building. He had their ultimate respect.
That's the only guy I can think of, other than Coach Wooden, who could have pulled it off. Football, while not as notoriously ego-laden as basketball is in the public imagination as far as players go, has its ego in the head coaching ranks of college. These guys get free labor, recruit who they want at will, and expect success from efforts that are less than the coaches that toil in the pros give to their craft.
Frankly, and maybe this colors what I think about Meyer, I'm just not a big fan of the college setup. As Spencer Hall would say about the chattel system that exists in our nation's universities with respect to players: Pay them their gosh darn money.
Other than that, the coaches wouldn't exist on a level they have. It's only at the big programs where high school football is still king that these guys tend to exist as Gods among alumni and fans. I don't buy any of it. You want to prove it? Prove it in the pros.