As college football continues to fight for its life on Capitol Hill, former coach Nick Saban has done his best to lend a helping hand in the battle.
Whether you agree with what he’s saying or not is irrelevant, however, at least for the purposes of this exercise today.
The rhetoric that I am seeing online surrounding Saban’s credentials as a legend in the annals of college football is concerning.
Full disclosure, I’m not an Alabama fan nor am I particularly fond of Saban as a coach.
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Being a Florida Gators and Miami Dolphins fan, the man is responsible for some depressing times for both my college and pro teams, so you know I’m not harboring any pro-Saban biases.
Hell, I just wrote a story about how Georgia is still a powerhouse program in the NIL era, so suffice it to say I haven’t exactly been opposed to coming to the defense of some of my more bitter rivals.
While Saban has been testifying before the Senate, many fans online have been attacking him, calling him a hypocrite.
I’ll reiterate that you don’t have to agree with what he is saying, but what rubs me the wrong way is the accusations that Saban was nothing more than a glorified “bagman” who couldn’t win without unfair advantages.
I won’t post every example here, but the summation of these claims basically boils down to “Saban could never win without giving five-stars Dodge Hellcats, that’s why he left when NIL came along.”
For starters, let’s address the initial claim that Saban quit because he couldn’t compete in the NIL era.
Saban’s last year was 2023, a full two years after NIL was introduced.
The Alabama Crimson Tide went 12-2, won an SEC Championship, and were a couple of bad center-quarterback snap exchanges from beating eventual national champion Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
They also had the second-ranked recruiting class in the country coming in that next season, so I don’t think being able to compete in the NIL era was the issue.
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The man was 72 years old at the time and was coming off of coaching for over three decades.
Sure, he probably wasn’t a fan of the way the sport was heading (who could blame him), but I don’t think it had anything to do with him being “scared.”
If Tide center Seth McLaughlin doesn’t develop an unfortunate case of the yips, Saban probably wins the natty in 2023 and rides off into the sunset even more decorated than he already is.
Speaking of which, anyone who thinks Hellcats and bags of cash were the only reason Saban is the greatest college football coach of all time needs a history lesson.
First and foremost, if you think Bama was the only program paying for players, then I have some beachfront property in Tuscaloosa to sell you.
I mentioned this in my Georgia article, but it bears repeating. EVERYONE was paying players back in the day.
Ohio State was paying players when Urban Meyer was there in the 2010s. USC was paying players when Pete Carroll was establishing a mini-dynasty in the early to mid-2000s.
Even Bama paid players long before Saban arrived on campus.
It didn’t help them win any games, since the team floundered for most of the late ’90s and early 2000s until hiring Saban.
And what was Nick Saban doing before he got to Alabama?
It’s like everyone just forgot the man was a head coach at three different college programs before his legendary tenure with the Tide.
He was a head coach at Toledo for a year, leading the Rockets to a 9-2 record before becoming the defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns under Bill Belichick (maybe you’ve heard of him).
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I guess Belichick hired Saban to be his DC because he knew some really good Dodge dealers in Cuyahoga County.
After his stint in Cleveland, Saban became the head coach of the Michigan State Spartans, winning 34 games in five years and even finishing in the top 10 his final season there.
The year before he arrived, the Spartans had five wins vacated for, you guessed it, “impermissible booster benefits” (translation: paying players).
Oh yeah, and then he left Michigan State to go be the head coach at LSU, where he won two SEC Championships and a national championship while compiling a 48-16 record.
Saban was a great coach before he ever donned that crimson “A” on his polo, and it wasn’t because he was paying players.
If you need more proof as to why Saban’s coaching acumen goes far beyond being a muscle car courier, look no further than his “coaching tree.”
Nick Saban has one of the single most impressive coaching trees in any sport, let alone college football.
Some of his most famous disciples include national championship-winning coaches like Kirby Smart and Jimbo Fisher as well as college football mainstays like Mark Dantonio.
Even the great Curt Cignetti cites his time with Saban as some of the most enlightening years of his career, saying he learned more in a year under Saban than anywhere else in his life.
That’s not to mention the myriad NFL players produced under Saban as well.
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Any way you slice it, Nick Saban is a legendary football coach, and it feels weird to even have to type that out to remind everyone.
Maybe it’s just because the internet gives everyone a voice, and a loud, vocal minority of critics can color public perception more easily these days.
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Regardless, I won’t stand for any Saban slander on my social media timeline.
He was, and always will be the GOAT. And no amount of 30-second clips of his testimony before the Senate will change what he accomplished on the field.
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