re: LSU would be nuts': College coaches chime in on the Les Miles reports

If you make the right hire and LSU wins nothing else matters. Case in point:

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Over the past seven days it has been about as ugly as it gets in the papers and on the local airwaves after the slippery, slimy Saban slithered off to Tuscaloosa last Wednesday to accept an eight-year, $32 million deal to coach Alabama. The announcement came two weeks after he emphatically told South Florida reporters in a news conference that, "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach." It became as bold-faced a lie as any football coach has ever uttered with videotape rolling and pens poised to record his every word. It has since earned him the moniker in these parts as Nick Satan, liar and loser.

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Among the most appalled was Don Shula, who's son Mike was fired as Alabama's head coach after the 2006 season, just a year after his 2005 team finished 10-2, followed by 6-6 in '06. Shula, a man who always did his best to take the high road and duck public controversy in 26 honorable seasons as the Dolphins Hall of Fame head coach, couldn't hide his utter contempt for Saban, willingly offering his opinion to every available camera in town. He publicly called Saban a "quitter" and "a failure" and said, "my reaction is that Saban in two years was 15-17. I don't think that will be any great loss."

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And while Shula was a guy who almost always made himself available for comment as one of the game's more accessible head coaches, there's also no question Nick (The Not So Slick) Saban's media relations were mostly a disaster from Day One on the job.

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Saban was able to get away with such foolishness during his days as a head coach at Michigan State and LSU, where the home town press surely was a tad friendlier to the local college football team and far more compliant in going with the program set forth by the martinet in charge. Saban likely will use the same Neanderthal policies at Alabama, where he was greeted like a conquering hero when he showed up to take the job last week.

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Over the last week, I've heard Saban lambasted on the air and in print as a loser, a liar, a bum, a cheat, a wimp, a fraud, a failure, an egomaniac, a hypocrite -- and that was the good stuff. ESPN radio and television talker Dan Le Betard, also a sports columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote that the bottom line on Saban's departure was that he "couldn't impact the pro game with all his genius and all his arrogance and all his condescension and all his coaches and all his self-help infomercial yammering and all of Wayne Huizenga's money. So he fled."

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For two years here, Saban also had babbled incessantly and rather condescendingly about the importance of honor, integrity, loyalty, mental toughness and accountability. How's this for honesty, loyalty and integrity?

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Saban didn't even have the stones to tell his own Dolphins assistants face to face that he was leaving. Instead, he gave them the news by speaker phone.

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Liar and loser seem to be the operative and most appropriate media phrases, save for the Tuscaloosa crowd. Still, a couple of losses to Auburn down the road, and it may apply there, as well. We can only hope.

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LINK

Bottom line: you cannot make these decisions based upon what other head coaches say in public and what media personalities think is fair.