http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2010/09/21/alabamas-nick-saban-will-always-remain-faithfully-unfaithful/Alabama's Nick Saban Will Always Remain Faithfully Unfaithful
There are many candidates for the least trustworthy coach in college football: Rich Rodriguez, Lane Kiffin, Bobby Petrino, Urban Meyer, Butch Davis, and Houston Nutt. Each of these men would do whatever it takes to win, it's a necessity of the job.
You could make a legitimate argument for any of these coaches. Rich Rodriguez currently has two major programs, West Virginia and Michigan involved in NCAA investigations.
Lane Kiffin made Al Davis look sane with the Oakland Raiders and then left Tennessee high and dry three weeks before signing day. Not to mention that in just 13 months he brought the NCAA to town.
Bobby Petrino is always looking for his next job, but he lacks the present resume to move anywhere. Urban Meyer has had 30 players arrested in five years, almost 17 percent of his total roster, and Butch Davis might have just brought down the death penalty on North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Nutt is so desperate to win, he'll play a felon at quarterback even if the NCAA doesn't clear him until 24 hours before the season kick's off.
All of these coaches are untrustworthy, and each of them offer persuasive arguments that they could be the most untrustworthy in college football. But when I really started thinking about the word untrustworthy, something clicked. In order to be untrustworthy, you have to be pursued, passionately desired by someone else. Chris Rock once opined that married men were as faithful as their options. In today's mercenary era of head coaches, coaches are only as trustworthy as their options.
And which coach has more options than any in college football today? Nick Saban.
Ask yourself this, is there any top 30 program in the country that Nick Saban couldn't win a national championship at in five years? That is, if you put Saban in charge of, for example, Michigan or UCLA, wouldn't he win a national title in five years? I think so. I think Nick Saban is that good at turning a decent program into a great one. In fact, as I argued in my preseason ranking of SEC coaches, the relative worth of college football programs is overrated in today's era. What matters now, more than ever, is who is your head coach.
Alabama was criticized for paying Saban $4 million a year, but that's a bargain. While I believe Urban Meyer, who is also tremendously underpaid, is currently the best coach in the SEC, if Saban wins another national title this year, I'd bump Saban past him and into second place all time behind Bear Bryant in the SEC. But Meyer hasn't shown the same wanderlust that Nick Saban has. I feel pretty confident that Urban Meyer will never coach anywhere else in college football. (That's presuming that the entire Florida roster isn't incarcerated as a precautionary move by Gainesville police.)
But I also think Urban Meyer has the best job in college football, head coach of the flagship state university in the best conference in America in a state that produces more top football prospects than any other. (There's a real argument to be made that the best way to undercut Florida's systemic advantages would be to invite Florida State into the conference so the Gators couldn't sell themselves to recruits as the only SEC school in the Sunshine State.) I'm not 100 percent convinced that Urban Meyer would win a national title at LSU or Alabama if he takes over in the same circumstances as Saban.
Saban has won two national titles at programs that aren't as naturally advantaged as Florida. People forget the mediocrity that existed at LSU before Saban arrived. In the 1990s, LSU went 31-46-1 in the SEC. Prior to Saban's tenure, LSU hadn't finished ranked in the top 10 since 1987. In his second year at LSU, Nick Saban won the SEC title, the school's first since 1988, and finished ranked in the top 10. in his fourth season as head coach, LSU won the national title. In just five years at LSU, Saban won a single less conference game than the Tigers had won in the previous decade.
How well did Saban leave LSU stocked when he left for the NFL?
I'll tell you: Les Miles won a national title two years later.
But, and this is key, Saban's talents mean that he's never spent more than five years as a head coach anywhere. Why is that? Because he's only as faithful as his coaching options. And Nick Saban has more coaching options than anyone in America. You think Dallas Cowboys billionaire owner Jerry Jones isn't casting a loving gaze in Saban's direction? You can think that, but you'd be wrong.
Much has been made of Saban's quote about leaving the Miami Dolphins for Alabama. "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach," Saban said before leaving to be the Alabama coach. But not as much attention has been paid to this fact: unlike virtually every other NFL head coach who has returned to the college ranks with his tail tucked between his legs, the Dolphins didn't want to lose Saban. In fact, owner Wayne Huizenga was upset with Saban for leaving.
Why?
Because he knew Saban would eventually win with the Dolphins. In fact, if you're a fan of another SEC team, you probably have one decision to thank for Saban's return to the college ranks: the Dolphins choosing to sign Daunte Culpepper instead of Drew Brees. Sign Brees and Saban might well have won the Super Bowl with the Dolphins instead of a BCS title at Alabama. It's a bitter pill for chastened LSU fans -- Saban's back in the SEC, but Drew Brees won New Orleans the Super Bowl.
Ultimately, as he's done throughout his coaching career, Saban acceded to the wishes of a new suitor. Even people with great talents like to be pursued, enjoy knowing that they have the option to do something new with someone new. The entire mess with the Dolphins was indicative of one thing: Nick Saban had a ton of options.
LSU fans weren't mad because Saban came back to the SEC. Would they have been mad if Gerry DiNardo or Curley Hallman had taken over at Alabama? Hell, would they be mad if Les Miles took over at Ole Miss tomorrow? No. LSU fans were mad because they'd seen firsthand that Saban was damn good at what he did and they didn't want him on the other side.
Three times, Nick Saban has attained great success and left for a new job in less than five years. Would any team at any level of football, college or pro, love for Nick Saban to be their head coach?
I think so.
When you strip it to its essence one thing, fundamentally, makes coaches untrustworthy: options.
And Saban has more options than any college coach ever has.
My colleague David Whitley has opined that Nick Saban vs. Bobby Petrino, this week's Arkansas vs. Alabama game, is the Snake Bowl. It's a nice turn of phrase even if, particularly in the case of Petrino, snakes might be inclined to sue for defamation. But if that's true at this exact moment Petrino's a starving snake without any options and Saban's a snake with as many options as he could potentially desire.
At some point soon, like a king cobra, Saban will strike anew and leave another fan base in the lurch.
http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2010/09/21/bobby-petrino-slithers-into-snake-bowl/Bobby Petrino Slithers Into Snake Bowl
The much-anticipated Snake Bowl is Saturday, though Arkansas fans need to calm down. Bobby Petrino still has time to quit and take the Cowboys job.
Or he might slink up to Michigan State's cardiac ward and try to convince Mark Dantonio to retire so he can coach the Spartans. Failing that, Petrino will write "Feed only bacon-cheeseburgers" on Dantonio's medical chart.
Nick Saban wouldn't even do that, if only because he's already marked the Spartans off his Jilt list. Now he's King of the Crimson Tide, which travels to Fayetteville for a big SEC hoedown this week.
The Hog Nation hasn't been this excited since Richard Nixon came to town for the No. 1 showdown with Texas in 1969. It's fitting since Saban is viewed in Nixonian terms when it comes to trustworthiness.
Trust me, compared to Petrino, Saban is Abraham Lincoln. On second thought, don't trust me. Trust almost anyone who's been exposed to Petrino's wily ways the past 20 years.
He's had 10 jobs over that span, which isn't all that remarkable for a football coach. What sets Petrino apart is a sociopathic lack of loyalty and forthrightness. Among those he's left with knives in their backs:
Falcons owner Arthur Blank. "You've got yourself a coach," he told him. Approximately 22.3 hours later, a beaming Petrino was on stage surrounded by Arkansas cheerleaders yelling "Pig Soooooey!"
The University of Louisville: a year didn't pass that Petrino didn't profess his undying love for the Cardinals and then look around for another job. His most shameless moment came when he secretly met with Auburn officials two days before Louisville's final regular-season game.
Naturally he denied the rendezvous. Then reporters from the Louisville Courier-Journal produced documents showing that a private plane from Auburn had landed at a local airport.
The Tigers were as scuzzy in this as Petrino, since Tommy Tuberville was still their coach. The same Tuberville who'd hired Petrino as Auburn's offensive coordinator, paving the way for him to get the Louisville gig.
Petrino stuck with his denial until the Tigers eventually fessed up. He begged forgiveness and got a fat new contract, which didn't' keep him from flirting with Notre Dame, LSU, Oakland, North Korea and Rachel Uchitel. By the time he left, he was making $1.6 million a year.
I don't blame Petrino for taking Blank's offer of almost $5 million a year. But for that kind of money Petrino at least should have turned off the engine in his rental car.
He stayed 13 games, winning three of them. The Petrino apologists -- they're easy to spot these days because they wear big red pig snouts on their heads -- say poor Bobby was unhappy in Atlanta. There were a lot of injuries and he had no idea Michael Vick would be in jail instead of training camp.
Waaaa.
If Vick had been around, the new head coach probably would have quit after 13 minutes. Petrino was used to bossing around college kids. Pampered pros don't ask "How high?" when the coach tells them to jump. They call their agents and tell them to tell the coach to go jump.
Petrino hated that. Every NFL coach does. But they know it's part of the job and deal with it. That's why they get paid the big bucks.
Instead of building bridges, Petrino built walls. He didn't tell players when they were being benched or why. Joey Harrington found out from reporters at a press conference that he was in danger of getting benched.
Then players wandered in two days after getting bombed on a Monday night game and found a typewritten goodbye note on their lockers from their dear coach.
"He preached team. He preached family," Harrington said. "He quit on us. That's not what a man does."
"It was a selfish act by a guy who has no class, who only thinks about himself," Warrick Dunn said.
"Disloyal," Jamaal Anderson said. And he played at Arkansas.
Anderson knows that if the coaches in this Saturday's big game had been on the Titanic, Saban would have jumped into the water hoping to find a $30 million life jacket. Petrino would have put on a woman's dress and tried to get a seat on a lifeboat.
Most other Arkansas loyalists haven't enjoyed the full Petrino Experience. They don't realize that winning the Snake Bowl will only encourage their hero.
He'll get feelers and offers from other schools. He'll say he loves the Ozarks and has never even heard of Michigan or Penn State or Texas A&M.
Fifteen minutes later, a band will be playing, cheerleaders will be jumping and a smiling Petrino will be getting introduced as the school's new coach.
If Arkansas fans are lucky, he'll leave them a goodbye note.
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