BAMANEWSBOT
Staff
This is what happens when youāre on top and everyone is chasing.
This is what happens when thereās a fresh cut and everyone smells blood.
Here we are, standing on the corner of hyperbole and hypertension, and everyone is throwing stones at poor little Nicky.
Let me ask all of you swirling in the outrage and pompous politicking of it all: do you really think Nick Saban needs another advantage?
Do you really think the best coach in college football; the guy who recruits better than any coach; the guy with the highest-paid staff in the game; the guy who has won three of the last five national championships (and was damn near close to winning five straight), is suddenly worried about an offensive system that threatens his very existence?
That heās so consumed by fixing whatās broken (what is exactly broken at Alabama?), heād strong-arm the American Football Coaches Association rules committee into an absolutely ridiculous 10-second penalty box for tempo offenses (itās an awful, proposed rule that wonāt pass) just to make sure he can continue to convince 5-star high school phenoms to come to Tuscaloosa and sit behind other 5-star phenoms like game day traffic on the 459 from Birmingham?
You canāt be that simple-minded. You canāt be that eager, that zeroed in on finding that one flaw that can bring down the Nicktator, that you completely ignore the one, overriding factor in this now circus of a witch hunt:
Saban is the best defensive coach in the game. Do you really think he wonāt adjust?
āNick hates excuses,ā one former Saban assistant told me Tuesday. āIf heās pushing this for any other reason than player safety, heās making an excuse. At the end of the day, he has to live with the decisions he has made ā and he canāt live with that if, in his mind, if itās an excuse.ā
To say itās anything other than a safety issue for Saban would mean youāve bought into the idea that tempo offenses are Sabanās undoing. Nothing could be more ridiculous.
Alabama lost to Texas A&M and its tempo offense two years ago, and beat the Aggies in College Station last year (but gave up 42 points) not because of tempo ā but because Texas A&M had the best player in college football.
Alabama played that same tempo offense last season against Ole Miss, and won 25-0. It played the same offense against Auburn, and had Saban put the ball in the hands of his best player (AJ McCarron) on multiple fourth downs instead of his kicker(s), we never would have witnessed the greatest college football play ever ā one that cost the Tide a chance to win three straight national titles.
Auburnās tempo offense didnāt beat Alabama; Sabanās game day decision-making did.
And letās not forget that Notre Dame ran tempo against the Tide in the 2012 national championship game ā and lost 42-14.
Look, I hate to be the guy who defends a guy who doesnāt need it, but someone has to throw some logic into this. Because Alabama lost to Auburn (tempo offense); because Alabama then lost to Oklahoma (tempo offense) in the Sugar Bowl, suddenly Saban is scrambling for answers and his only avenue is the AFCA rules committee?
Hereās a novel idea: maybe Oklahoma simply played better than Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Maybe the Alabama defense last season wasnāt as good as everyone thought it was. And maybe, just maybe, Saban really is concerned about player safety ā even though there is zero evidence tempo offense leads to more injuries.
To believe that Saban is the puppeteer behind this awful rules proposal (one more time: itās not going to pass) means you must also believe that Saban, with every possible advantage already in his possession, would be deliberately deceitful to gain another.
It would also mean that Saban doesnāt trust the foundation and core of who he is as a coach, to believe he can find a way to consistently stop tempo offenses no matter who is playing quarterback. He canāt stop it, so he needs help from the rules committee.
Iām not buying it.
Coaches have egos, and no coach has a bigger ego than the guy sitting in the big chair in Tuscaloosa, who just so happens to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of similar egos that pack his stadium every fall Saturday. And this coach is the mastermind behind a jerry-rigged a proposal to slow tempo offenses?
Have we dived so deep to find that one thing that can bring down the Nicktator that weāre selling the idea of a megalomaniacal, perfectionist coach who lives for practice suddenly deciding to embrace excuses?
If Saban is being deceitful, if he showed up at the annual AFCA rules meeting to talk about the tempo offense as it relates to potential injuries just to bend ears and gain an advantage on the field, heās not the coach we think he is.
Heās just some fraud who has somehow stumbled ass-backward into coaching and developing a monster program that recruits and wins multiple national championships on its own.
Thereās your hyperbole, everyone.
This is what happens when thereās a fresh cut and everyone smells blood.
Here we are, standing on the corner of hyperbole and hypertension, and everyone is throwing stones at poor little Nicky.
Let me ask all of you swirling in the outrage and pompous politicking of it all: do you really think Nick Saban needs another advantage?
Do you really think the best coach in college football; the guy who recruits better than any coach; the guy with the highest-paid staff in the game; the guy who has won three of the last five national championships (and was damn near close to winning five straight), is suddenly worried about an offensive system that threatens his very existence?
That heās so consumed by fixing whatās broken (what is exactly broken at Alabama?), heād strong-arm the American Football Coaches Association rules committee into an absolutely ridiculous 10-second penalty box for tempo offenses (itās an awful, proposed rule that wonāt pass) just to make sure he can continue to convince 5-star high school phenoms to come to Tuscaloosa and sit behind other 5-star phenoms like game day traffic on the 459 from Birmingham?
You canāt be that simple-minded. You canāt be that eager, that zeroed in on finding that one flaw that can bring down the Nicktator, that you completely ignore the one, overriding factor in this now circus of a witch hunt:
Saban is the best defensive coach in the game. Do you really think he wonāt adjust?
āNick hates excuses,ā one former Saban assistant told me Tuesday. āIf heās pushing this for any other reason than player safety, heās making an excuse. At the end of the day, he has to live with the decisions he has made ā and he canāt live with that if, in his mind, if itās an excuse.ā
To say itās anything other than a safety issue for Saban would mean youāve bought into the idea that tempo offenses are Sabanās undoing. Nothing could be more ridiculous.
Alabama lost to Texas A&M and its tempo offense two years ago, and beat the Aggies in College Station last year (but gave up 42 points) not because of tempo ā but because Texas A&M had the best player in college football.
Alabama played that same tempo offense last season against Ole Miss, and won 25-0. It played the same offense against Auburn, and had Saban put the ball in the hands of his best player (AJ McCarron) on multiple fourth downs instead of his kicker(s), we never would have witnessed the greatest college football play ever ā one that cost the Tide a chance to win three straight national titles.
Auburnās tempo offense didnāt beat Alabama; Sabanās game day decision-making did.
And letās not forget that Notre Dame ran tempo against the Tide in the 2012 national championship game ā and lost 42-14.
Look, I hate to be the guy who defends a guy who doesnāt need it, but someone has to throw some logic into this. Because Alabama lost to Auburn (tempo offense); because Alabama then lost to Oklahoma (tempo offense) in the Sugar Bowl, suddenly Saban is scrambling for answers and his only avenue is the AFCA rules committee?
Hereās a novel idea: maybe Oklahoma simply played better than Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Maybe the Alabama defense last season wasnāt as good as everyone thought it was. And maybe, just maybe, Saban really is concerned about player safety ā even though there is zero evidence tempo offense leads to more injuries.
To believe that Saban is the puppeteer behind this awful rules proposal (one more time: itās not going to pass) means you must also believe that Saban, with every possible advantage already in his possession, would be deliberately deceitful to gain another.
It would also mean that Saban doesnāt trust the foundation and core of who he is as a coach, to believe he can find a way to consistently stop tempo offenses no matter who is playing quarterback. He canāt stop it, so he needs help from the rules committee.
Iām not buying it.
Coaches have egos, and no coach has a bigger ego than the guy sitting in the big chair in Tuscaloosa, who just so happens to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of similar egos that pack his stadium every fall Saturday. And this coach is the mastermind behind a jerry-rigged a proposal to slow tempo offenses?
Have we dived so deep to find that one thing that can bring down the Nicktator that weāre selling the idea of a megalomaniacal, perfectionist coach who lives for practice suddenly deciding to embrace excuses?
If Saban is being deceitful, if he showed up at the annual AFCA rules meeting to talk about the tempo offense as it relates to potential injuries just to bend ears and gain an advantage on the field, heās not the coach we think he is.
Heās just some fraud who has somehow stumbled ass-backward into coaching and developing a monster program that recruits and wins multiple national championships on its own.
Thereās your hyperbole, everyone.
