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If all goes as expected tonight, Alabama’s Nick Saban will become the first BCS coach to win championships for different institutions.
Since the advent of the Associated Press poll in 1936, no coach has done anything like that. What’s more, Saban will have done it within a single decade. In just six years, to be exact. With a couple NFL seasons in between. It’s historic. But it leaves me cold.
I’ve just spent more hours than I care to remember scouring Saban’s recent interview transcripts, trying to figure out if there’s something -- a shred of laughter, empathy, emotion, anything -- I might have missed the during these media sessions in Newport Beach the last couple of days. Seems I have not. Saban’s incessant concerns are “process” and “execution.” My favorite line of the last couple days: “…if you’re not bringing your ‘A’ game, you have a good shot of not being able to have success.”
You sure you want to go out on a limb there, coach?
He’s a control freak, of course. They all are, and always have been. And while Texas coach Mack Brown might have the self-deprecating, old boy charm that Saban lacks, I’m not arguing that he’s an innocent. Texas is the college equivalent of the New York Yankees, an outrageously profitable institution with designs for its own television network. So much for amateur athletics. You don’t become the Longhorns’ coach without the requisite guile.
Still, Saban seems to embody a new breed: colorless, humorless, and frighteningly efficient. Consider the most prominent among their ranks: Saban, Florida’s Urban Meyer and Ohio State’s Jim Tressel. They look like they’d OD if force-fed a bran muffin.
But Saban isn’t merely uptight. He’s reputed to have a mean side. He’s famous for making a Dolphins rookie named Manuel Wright cry at practice. When he left Michigan State for LSU, he sent a private plane to fetch any assistants who wished to continue working for him in Baton Rouge. The plane returned empty. Wonder why?
On Dec. 21, 2006, Saban declared: “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.” Two weeks later, he took the job.
At $32 million for eight years, both Saban and the university have profited handsomely. But you wonder: what happened to the college football coach?
He could be excessive, wrong-headed, narcissistic. But he was also a unique figure, specific to an institution, or a region. It wasn’t so long ago: Ara Parseghian, Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler, Woody Hayes, Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson. They weren’t the same guy, nor were they trying to be.
It’s worth mentioning that Saban has resurrected the football fortunes of an institution once known as Paul “Bear” Bryant University. Some years ago, I found myself doing research at the Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa. The experience was a revelation. The allegiance Alabama football inspires is unlike anything I grew up with in New York, and much of it is based on the enduring cult of Bryant.
There was a reason -- many, actually -- that Bryant resonated so deeply with the people of Alabama. But for these purposes, suffice it to say that he was his own man -- as the houndstooth hat would attest -- with his own flaws, ranging from mere stubbornness to ruthlessness. He’d smoke and take a drink (Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting those are flaws). But he wasn’t coaching for the next job, and his players weren’t playing merely for “the next level.”
Forty-five years ago, Bryant’s team played Darrell Royal’s Longhorns for the national championship, the first prime-time bowl game. With four days to go, Alabama’s Joe Namath re-injured his knee in practice. Bryant wasted little time before informing the press that his new starting quarterback was Steve Sloan.
Why are you smiling? Bryant was asked.
“Because I’m an idiot.”
Hardly. As it happened, Namath would relieve Sloan with 'Bama down 14-0. He then led the Tide on a thrilling comeback -- only to have it end on a fourth and goal in the fourth quarter. With his bad knee, Namath called a quarterback sneak and was stopped inches from of a touchdown.
So it ended, Alabama’s undefeated season. By any interpretation, Namath’s decision was a failure of both execution and process. But its aftermath only inspired more loyalty in the coach.
There’s a famous photograph taken in the post-game locker room, Bryant with his arm around a crestfallen Namath. The great coach took the blame, saying the quarterback sneak had been his idea all along.
And therein lies the difference between the generations, and the men themselves. Bryant was older then than Saban is now, and making just $12,000 a year in salary. But rest assured that if he sent a plane, it would return packed with volunteers.
