Well, well. Seems Nick Saban has moved from emphatic denial to tight-lipped ambiguity on the subject of the Alabama job. Also seems Mal Moore is on the ground in Miami this evening.
Most reports are that we’ve offered him an 8-year, $40 million deal, and that he’ll say one way or the other as soon as tomorrow.
I’d love to have him, of course. He’s a highly talented coach who has won convincingly (not a single losing college season anywhere). But even more than that, if he came, I’d love what it implied about his relationship with the university. You see, Saban is a control freak. He’s good, and he knows it, and he wants to do it his way. He simply wouldn’t take the Alabama job without total autonomy, and that would represent a radical (healthy) new approach for Mal Moore, Robert Witt, and the trustees.
Taking this job, Nick Saban would be saying: “Yes, I’ll come, and yes, I’ll win. I will be the highest-paid coach in the NCAA and I will answer to no one.”
I haven’t the slightest problem with that attitude when the person displaying it can back it up.
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Saban vs. Tuberville would make for some interesting years ahead.
Indeed. Saban vs. Fulmer would be fun too.
I have little doubt that Saban will win a lot of games. I just hope he stays long enough to right the ship for good and grow an assistant or two into a plausible successor. He’s 55 years old, and I don’t think it’s realistic to hope for much more than 10 or 12 years. It would certainly be nice to have an obvious way forward.
[...] change—the time to hand over the keys and shut down the old way of doing things forever. I touched on this very thing concerning Alabama’s hire of Nick Saban. You pile up the money, and you give a guy true control of the football program, and you’ve [...]