| NEWS Nick Saban Has Six New Assistants — and Will Probably Still Win

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  1. Nick Saban Has Six New Assistants — and Will Probably Still Win New York Times



The start of the college football season is mere weeks away, and fans begging for Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide to backslide do not have a lot to pin their hopes on.

The Crimson Tide have won five national championships since 2009 and they are expected to have their usual array of talent on both sides of the ball and special teams in 2018. There is something of a quarterback controversy between the junior Jalen Hurts, who led the team to the last two national championship games, and the sophomore Tua Tagovailoa, who rescued the team after halftime of last season’s championship game against Georgia. It is a luxurious problem for Saban to solve.

There is this though: Saban has six new assistant coaches. Brent Key, an offensive line coach, is the only assistant in the same role as 2017. Saban also has a new offensive coordinator and new defensive coordinator. Running backs coach Burton Burns, the last remaining assistant coach from Saban’s first Alabama staff, retired from coaching in January. Mike Locksley is Saban’s seventh offensive coordinator at Alabama.

In this era of the college football coach as chief executive — fund-raiser, spokesman, visionary — staff turnover like this would be an impediment for some coaches, but not for Saban. He has managed similar situations before, cycling through 39 assistants since arriving at Alabama in 2007 while winning at an absurd pace (132-20). Perhaps it is because Saban has figured out how to be a different kind of leader — a very hands-on C.E.O.

Bobby Bowden, who was the head coach at Florida State for 34 years, said when he started to lose assistant coaches, F.S.U. went from national title contender to “above average.” Chuck Amato became head coach at North Carolina State in 2000, Mark Richt, became the head coach at Georgia in 2001, and Bowden’s longtime assistant, Jim Gladden, retired after the 2001 season. F.S.U. had no Top 10 finishes during Bowden’s last seven seasons.

“All of them leaving took a piece out of the pie,” Bowden said. “The worst we did was seven wins, but it was enough to get me fired, which goes back to the question of why doesn’t the same thing happen with Saban?”

The answer, Saban’s former assistants say, rests with his unchanging belief in big ideas like structure and consistency.

“Everything within the culture is clearly defined, your role, your job, and when somebody new comes in, Alabama just rolls out the playbook about what it takes to be successful coaching that position,” said Geoff Collins, the head coach at Temple, who was Saban’s first player personnel director at Alabama. “You stick with the process. There are no competing philosophies.”

South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp, who was an assistant under Saban at Louisiana State from 2001-04, said Saban cultivates a vertical, top-down culture. “There is one message in that program,” he said.

When offensive coordinator Major Applewhite left Alabama for Texas following the 2007 season, Collins said he and then-sports information director Jeff Purinton were instructed by Saban to put together a binder that listed attributes Saban wanted in an assistant coach. Using the guidelines, Collins and Purinton assembled a list of candidates for the binder. It included Jim McElwain, who was eventually hired and called plays for two Alabama national championship teams (2009, 2011).

“He knows what the right fit is for an assistant, but he is also very good on trends and where things are headed and staying ahead and constantly evaluating people in the field,” said McElwain, the wide receivers coach at Michigan. “When he does have turnover he is ahead of what he needs in the organization.”

Saban hears complaints about his large ancillary staff — his “analysts” — but he employs so many, he said, to cultivate a pool of candidates to choose from when he has an opening. Mike Groh, the offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles, was one of those analysts who became a full-time Alabama assistant coach.

“I’d rather hire somebody that I know as a person in terms of who they are, kind of character they have, kind of leadership they demonstrate, the kind of teacher they can be, rather than having to go on somebody else’s recommendation,” Saban said, at the media event for the Southeastern Conference two weeks ago.

To vet new hires McElwain said, Saban finds coaches who already have relationships in certain areas of the country, which is important in recruiting.

“That’s 100 percent part of the hiring process,” McElwain said.

At SEC Media Days, Anfernee Jennings, a 2018 starting linebacker, was asked to assess the difference between 2017 defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, and his replacement, Tosh Lupoi. “It’s going to be much of the same thing, just a different person calling it.” Jennings said.

To be sure, Alabama has other structural advantages that could cancel out the disadvantage of its sweeping staff overhaul. The Crimson Tide generally have more good players than any other program in the SEC (53 draft picks the last six seasons, 15 in the first round). Also, the SEC has lost some of its finest coaches in the Saban era — Florida’s Urban Meyer is now at Ohio State, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier is retired, L.S.U.’s Les Miles got fired after failing to match the big red rival. Their replacements have been no match for Saban so far.

In the last two years, impatient fans and boosters have forced school presidents to replace three coaches in the SEC’s Western Division, who were not able to compete with Saban (Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin, Arkansas’ Bret Bielema and Miles). A fourth coach, Mississippi’s Hugh Freeze, was fired for reasons related to trying to keep up with Alabama: N.C.A.A. recruiting violations. Since 2012, every school in the SEC, besides Alabama, has replaced its head coach, which means those schools have their own staff turnover to manage.

Schools trying to compete with Saban invariably take a step back attempting a big step forward, which is similar to what is happening in the N.F.L.’s A.F.C. East. Owners fire coaches failing to catch Saban’s friend, Bill Belichick, who has coached the New England Patriots since 2000.

“That’s one of the amazing things about Saban,” Bowden said. “He doesn’t just lose a good man, he loses good men, and I don’t see any shortage of the number of quality players and how they play. I’ve tried to figure out why, why, why.”
 
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