Nick Saban Laughs at the “Nick Saban Rule”
While Les Miles blames Mack Brown for the new recruiting restrictions, Nick Saban has figured a way around them.
The NCAA adopted a SEC-proposed rule that took head coaches off the road for the April/May evaluation period. This off-season, for the first time, head coaches will be staying on campus and away from the potential recruits. The SEC brought the idea of the new rule before the NCAA, supposedly because several of the coaches were trying to slow down ‘Bama’s Saban and Florida’s Urban Meyer The new rule states that a head coach can no longer go evaluate recruits on the road during the spring. The idea is to prevent “bump-ins” between coaches and recruits when the coaches are out talking to the high school coaches.
Not only can coaches no longer hit the road, but they are now restricted to only one phone call to prospects during this time period and only one evaluation of athletic ability.
But Saban has even figured out a way around that rule.
Imagine the fun the Tennessee staff will have trying to show Phil Fulmer how to use the internet.
July 12, 2008 at 9:23 am
WILL SABAN DO BAMA LIKE HE DID THE DOLPHINS ??
Saban left Dolphins as a loser, weasel
BY DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com
The punctuation on the Nick Saban Dolphin Error is greasy and greedy. You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.
Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.
Maybe Saban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few days, he has looked like a complete and utter amateur.
He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower than that. And for this he’ll get a $25 million raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you wonder what USC’s Pete Carroll or Ohio State’s Jim Tressel are worth, doesn’t it?
Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. Saban, a duplicitous one, gets the most lucrative job in college football.
Saban could have fixed his reputation today if he had that mental toughness he is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now. About ”competitive character” and ”overcoming adversity” and blah, blah, blah. You preach it, Nick. But you don’t live it. Not when it’s easier to run away and hide.
Miami, 6-10 against an easy schedule, was swept this year by younger teams in its division — the Jets and Bills. The team isn’t better than when Saban arrived, just older. What little winning Saban has done has been with players left for him by Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt. What’s the best decision Saban has made in two years? Can you name one?
So it makes sense that he would lack hope. But when his players are losing, he asks them to be proud and fight and overcome, even though what they do hurts a hell of a lot more than what he does. But now, reputation in tatters, integrity stained, he runs away from this fight — to be a dictator to kids who question less and have less power to challenge him. Of course he’d go. It’s a good deal easier. And a new crowd eager for a savior can hear his hot-air speeches about being a gladiator.
Saban made Huizenga look like a public fool with all his condescending talk of integrity recently, reprimanding reporters at every turn while his agent secretly kept taking slimy calls from Alabama in the shadows. What a raging fraud Saban sounds like today, every bit as counterfeit as Miami’s Super Bowl expectations.
Oh, a man, even one under contract, is allowed to change his mind and listen to other offers, especially those that double his salary. But what makes Saban’s behavior so unctuous recently is that he had the audacity to question the questioners with super-sized arrogance even while lying all along to his players and his boss. Huizenga has given this man everything he has wanted — given him more than any NFL owner anywhere has given any other coach. He deserves better than this. He deserves better than Saban leaving him to answer the hard questions today.
Makes you wonder, too: Huizenga went after Ricky Williams and his money with cutthroat zeal, and Williams is still paying him back. But Saban just broke a contract, too. There are no outs in Saban’s contract to go back to the minor leagues.
Remember how mad you were when Williams retired? Well, he wasn’t cheating on you. He wasn’t grabbing for more money. His body hurt from a beating, and he wanted to rest. What Saban has done is a more traitorous act — the most traitorous act in the history of the franchise. He’s leaving simply because he couldn’t handle a hard job on the sidelines of a game in which he asks others to be violent. He gave up, in other words. And filing it under ”family” now as a diluter, in search of understanding, rings hollow because you can’t believe anything the man says about this situation. You think he’d be leaving if he were 3-13?
Saban, infomercial sermonizer, talked a lot about loyalty and integrity and toughness.
But, in the end, these were not his guides.
They were only the kinds of things he demanded of others.
July 12, 2008 at 9:57 am
Not that I care, but to avoid copyright liability you may need to take down this post. People can put up links to stories, but can’t reproduce them word for word.