re: So tell me about Burton Burns

He's the Darth Vader to Saban's emperor role.

He is also the guy who provides the check/balance to the 'loopholes' and rule-skirting they do. Sometimes he's the one pushing them to the edge, sometimes he's the one who pulls them back from the edge. Extremely refined skill set and very valuable.

In his everyday life he has two 'coordinating' roles. One is their very well organized recruiting; the other is the even more organized but difficult to manage non-coach, non-booster army of admins that somehow find creative ways to contact recruits (hence Bama always "shows more love").

For example pretty little girl A calls Recruit B and asks him to confirm that his name Bob does indeed start with a B and end with a B. She just happens to mention that she's heard Saban talk about him and would be really excited if he did come to Bama. It's an administrative contact from admissions, not a recruiting call.

Organizing 120 or more of those people is a tough job to make sure lines are not crossed and the right people are being 'incidentally' contacted in the right way. Not many people could manage that, especially under Saban's expectations.

So here's hoping to him retiring. Saban will be looking for someone to continue that on, but it will be hard. Like I said, not many people in the world can handle that and balance against NCAA rules.

ETA: and Burns, even though he is a S La guy, laughs at coaches like Studrwa's efforts in N La. Just like Saban, he'll attack you where you are weakest every time, thereby wreaking your strengths.