Hopefully, fans appreciate the greatness of Mike Krzyzewski, Nick Saban

They are second-generation Americans, the grandsons of Eastern European immigrants who came to this country and worked in coal mines because that labor held the promise of a better life. Nick Saban’s dad ran a service station in West Virginia. Mike Krzyzewski’s dad ran an elevator in Chicago. Their boys had something to prove.

Saban worked relentlessly to match the exacting standard his father insisted that he meet. Krzyzewski worked tirelessly to satisfy the demands he made of himself.

They are outwardly different men, reverse images in a way. Saban’s brusque manner camouflages the caring man beneath. Krzyzewski’s charm cloaks the competitor who lives to bury an elbow into an opposing ribcage.

Over the last generation, Nick Saban and Mike Krzyzewski have proven that we live in a golden age of college coaching. You can argue that what Knute Rockne built in his day outshines what Saban has accomplished today. You can argue that John Wooden’s 10 NCAA men’s basketball championships are double the achievement of Krzyzewski’s five.

But in the week that Krzyzewski will coach the final regular-season game of his 47-year career, it says here that Saban and Krzyzewski are the best coaches that the two flagship sports of American college athletics have ever seen.

Saban, 70, signed a contract extension last year through 2029. Whether he coaches for eight more seasons, no one can say, but if intends to retire anytime soon, he’s not telling anyone.

Krzyzewski, who turned 75 last month, made this season a valedictory to a career filled with head-turning numbers. He has won 1,195 games, gone to 12 Final Fours and is in position to win his 13^th ACC championship. Put another way: Since being named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, which would seem to signal a rather good career, Krzyzewski has won 590 more games and won two more national titles.

He came to Duke at age 28 after five seasons at West Point, his alma mater, where he played point guard for a young Bob Knight. In his new biography, “Coach K – The Rise and Reign of Mike Krzyzewski,” Ian O’Connor describes the anger that burned through Krzyzewski in the Cadets’ first scrimmage when he spotted Penn State players laughing at his undersized, undertalented team.

“I do not want them to score a point for the first six minutes,” Krzyzewski told his players. “Not one foul shot or one basket, nothing. I want them to know and feel what Army defense is like. I want to let them know that we don’t like what just happened.”

The Nittany Lions didn’t score for three minutes. They called a timeout. And they didn’t score for the next three. What Krzyzewski needed his players to understand, O’Connor wrote, is that “they would have to win on effort and execution.”

If that bell you hear ringing isn’t Saban’s “Process,” then Krzyzewskiville doesn’t make line checks four times a day.

Krzyzewskiville is the tent village outside Cameron Indoor Stadium where tomorrow’s corporate chieftains sleep for an entire winter for the privilege of painting (and yelling) themselves blue in support of Duke basketball. Krzyzewskiville illustrates exactly what its namesake has wrought.

Krzyzewski made Duke a blue blood

In 42 years at Duke, Krzyzewski transformed a small private college program with a respectable history into an iconic destination. Don’t forget – Krzyzewski’s predecessor, Bill Foster, left Duke for South Carolina, as in, South Carolina’s a better job. Which, in 1980, it might have been. Cameron wasn’t a shrine, just an oversized gym.

The metamorphosis of Duke basketball into the short-pants version of Alabama football is a hoot, particularly because the Blue Devils of the mid-1980s started out as Cinderellas. All of a sudden, the guys wearing Duke unis not only could play fast, winning basketball, but they spoke in complete thoughts. Their coach held news conferences entertaining enough to demand two-drink minimums. They charmed everyone as they went to one Final Four after another without cutting down a net.

Krzyzewski didn’t win a national championship until his fifth Final Four, in 1991. At the time, only four coaches – John Wooden, Dean Smith, Denny Crum, and Adolph Rupp – had taken a team to more Final Fours. Now that Krzyzewski has won five NCAAs, it feels like a fait accompli. But in 1991, as the Blue Devils prepared to play a UNLV team that had won 45 consecutive games, it felt as if Krzyzewski might never win one.

Duke upset UNLV 79-77 on that Saturday in Indianapolis, and goodbye, Cinderella. By the time the Blue Devils repeated their championship the following year, Duke began to be more feared than loved.

Both Saban and Krzyzewski looked for higher mountains to climb. Saban, ever restless, never stayed anywhere more than five seasons, even giving the NFL a try for two misbegotten seasons, before arriving at Alabama in 2007.

Krzyzewski took long looks at the Boston Celtics in 1990 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 before scratching that career itch by taking on the USA Basketball team. He coached NBA stars to three consecutive Olympic gold medals (2008, ’12, ’16).

Saban and Krzyzewski are friendly, if not friends. It turns out they are kind of busy. But last year, shortly after Alabama won its sixth national championship under Saban, he appeared as a guest on Krzyzewski’s satellite radio show. They discussed how success is maintained by developing a culture. Krzyzewski asked him about the scale of running a football program, with dozens more players as well as hot and cold running analysts. Krzyzewski, at one point, described Saban as “the greatest coach in the history of the game of football.”

Game recognizes game.