re: Les on his relationship with Saban

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What has Saban ever done to you personally to give you that opinion

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Cris Dishman, a Pro Bowl cornerback who played under Saban in the late 1980s, recalls in the excellent biography Saban: The Making of a Coach that the position coach provided constant agitation. (Monte Burke’s excellent look at one of the best college football coaches of all time debuts August 4; PFT has finagled an advance copy.)

“I thought my name was ‘F–king A–hole’ for a long time,” Dishman told Burke. “First name ‘F–king,’ last name ‘A–hole.'”

Dishman told Burke that the player occasionally checked the back of his jersey to make sure his real name was on there.

And Dishman wasn’t the only one who head it from Saban. Safety Keith Bostic once reacted to Saban during a meeting by pouncing on him. Bostic and Saban wrestled on the floor until other players broke it up.

The situation becomes downright bizarre when considering that the ultra-intense Saban worked on the Oilers staff for Jerry Glanville, a notoriously loose and undisciplined coach.

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The time Saban spent in South Florida fell far short of expectations created when Huizenga lured him from LSU with a splashy annual salary of nearly $5 million. Burke cites many incidents, including Saban getting angry because the wrong kind of Little Debbie cakes were stocked in his office as well as shouting matches with defensive players Keith Traylor and Zach Thomas.

Worse was the time Saban stepped over offensive lineman Jeno James, who had collapsed into convulsions and needed to be airlifted to a nearby hospital. Although it might be a stretch to say Saban lost the team over that incident, he clearly earned no points with James’ teammates.

"What about natural human compassion?” former fullback Heath Evans, from King’s Academy, told Burke.

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Lil Nicky doesn't even wear the pants in his own household.

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Nick Saban might never have walked out on the Dolphins to become coach at Alabama in 2007 if not for a series of events that began, oddly enough, with the remodeling of his lake home in Georgia years ago.

The home builder Saban hired was Chuck Moore, whose uncle, Mal Moore, was the Crimson Tide athletic director whose dogged pursuit eventually succeeded — with an assist from Saban’s wife, Terry.

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Moore’s overtures to Steve Spurrier and Rich Rodriguez proved to be dead ends, so Moore zeroed in on Saban, one of the hottest names in football despite mediocrity in Miami.

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Mal Moore had hope but no appointment to meet with Saban. In fact, for much of this period, Saban refused to take his calls. But Moore quickly hit it off with Terry Saban and was told by Jimmy Sexton, Saban’s agent, that if Saban ever wanted to return to coaching college football, Alabama would be a choice destination.

As Moore and Terry Saban talked at Saban’s home in Fort Lauderdale, Nick Saban met with then-Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga in Davie. There, an apparent decision was reached: Saban wasn’t going anywhere. But when he called Terry and said he still had no desire to meet with Moore, it was Terry who informed her husband that she’d already invited Moore over for dinner that night.

“She made it clear to Moore that Saban was miserable in the NFL and dearly missed coaching in college,” Burke writes. “She also made it clear that she wanted out.”

The next day, when Huizenga checked in with Saban, the tone he heard had changed. That’s when Huizenga told Saban to follow his heart, even though the owner knew Saban’s heart no longer was in Miami.

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I don't know how much of Saban’s years at LSU will be covered in this new book but the leaked excerpts have been juicy so far. It's set to be released August 4th.



It's said that both the Giants (1997) had interest in hiring Saban as head coach as well as the Colts (1998) while he was still at Michigan St. which pretty much verifies the rumors that Saban was always flirting with the NFL behind the scenes.

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When the Giants fired Dan Reeves after the 1996 season, they eventually hired Jim Fassel. Before hiring Fassel, the Giants interviewed Saban, who at the time served as the coach at Michigan State..

“We were very impressed with him,” John Mara said of Saban. “We offered him the job.”

Taking it a step farther, the late George Young, G.M. of the Giants at the time, told John Mara and his father, Wellington, that Saban was “the best candidate [Young had] ever interviewed.”

The problem is that Saban wanted control over personnel and the coaching staff. The Giants didn’t want to give the coach that kind of power. And so the process of negotiating a contract broke down before it ever got very far.

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Imagine Bill Polian, Peyton Manning, and Nick Saban all working together. Or at least trying to.

It could have happened, and it would have happened if Polian had his way.

In the excellent new Nick Saban biography, Monte Burke explains that Polian wanted to hire Saban to replace Lindy Infante.

Polian met with Saban, who at the time was coaching Michigan State, and Polian liked what he heard from Saban.

“I was prepared to offer him the job,” Polian told Burke.

The talks broke down, as they did a year earlier with the Giants, because Saban wanted control over personnel and the coaching staff. Which is merely a glimpse of the friction that would have emerged if three guys who like to control everything — Polian, Saban, and Manning — had been working together.

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Jadeveon Clowney on Nick Saban.

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“I don’t see no big deal like everybody else,” Clowney said in Saban: The Making of a Coach, via Greg Rajan of the Houston Chronicle. “They’d say, ‘He’s the king of all of football.’ The guy ain’t nothing but 5-5. He’s a short guy. Everybody’s going crazy on Nick Saban.

“He talked the whole time he was there. I was dozing off. He can talk. A lot. He talked for a whole straight hour.”

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People calling Saban an a-hole are right...he actually wears monogrammed shirts and and straw hats to prove that he is an A #1 A-hole...