4. Nick Saban – What to make of man that seems so unhappy, but that he is very unhappy. How we got to here from the jubilant Nick Saban of his introductory press conference at Alabama, has been caused by many things, but the most obvious is that Saban compromised his principles soon after arriving in Tuscaloosa and it is eating him up inside right now. Last week Saban said that he was not going to sugarcoat it for his players, and we will not sugarcoat it now. Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa to find the country club that Mike Shula had been running at Alabama for 4 years had almost totally decimated any type of discipline and expectations of excellence. Saban faced a key decision early on in the spring to either clean house of about 20 players (many of them starters) that were being disruptive to the team, or to try and motivate those players by both encouragement and punishment. Saban went with the latter and he ended up with a terrible mess on his hands. The players that actually bought into what Saban was preaching rightly felt that players that didn’t really care about the football team were getting special treatment, because they were allowed to stay on the team when it was clear they continued to violate the rules that had been laid down by Saban upon his arrival. One of the key turning points for Saban and this Alabama team was the July 19 arrest of three Alabama players outside of a bar near campus. If you read the arrest records from that incident it is clear that these players acted in an incredibly inappropriate, and what turned out to be illegal manner, but Nick Saban then vacationing at his lake house in north Georgia barely even addressed the issue of the players’ behavior publicly upon his return to Tuscaloosa. At that moment Saban divided his team, and forever cemented with this team at least that his rules were “flexible.” From that non-action grew many other problems within the team that led to many more suspensions from everything to players getting improper benefits to rumors of fighting between players and drug problems. With the loss to Auburn on Saturday Alabama finished the season at 6-6, which is probably exactly the record Saban would have put up if he had tossed the 20 or so troublemakers out upon his arrival in Tuscaloosa. Of course, there is nothing Saban can do about any of this now, except move forward and try to establish some kind of semblance of discipline for what is a football program on the edge of spinning out of control. What do you do when you make a mistake, and when you violate your own principles? You admit it, both to your players and to the public, and you start living by what you preach and that means from this moment forward. We wonder if Saban has it within him to really admit all of the mistakes he has made since his departure from Miami, especially since the coaching tree he is from is not know for coaches that own up their own failings. On top of all of this, Saban has acted like an incredible jackass at his press conferences this year, not realizing that the Alabama media were no more going to challenge him on anything than the German media of Hitler in the 1930s. If you get a chance go to
www.myfoxgameday.com and watch some of Saban’s press conferences. There you will find a troubled and conflicted man that knows he has violated his own principles and that it is going to be very hard to undue some of his own actions of the past year. Saban is on the Hot Seat now because of the expectations at Alabama, and if he does not already know it, 6-6 is not going to fly in 2008. In fact, anything less than 8 wins will be unacceptable in ’08 with such a soft schedule, so Saban better not only get to work, he had better man up and admit his mistakes. If he doesn’t we may read stories in two years about the Amazing Fall of Nick Saban.
