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Good article on Saban-Fisher squabble: The Athletic

SWTHORN123

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Dec 19, 2008
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Good, brief read.

This directly below jumped out at me, made me smile...

"It always has been hard to take a grown man named Jimbo seriously, especially when he says, “I don’t cheat, and I don’t lie,” and he has a show-cause penalty on his resume."
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"Nick Saban is upset because Texas A&M is buying players (allegedly) and Jackson State paid $1 million for a recruit (allegedly) and this entire NIL enterprise — which was well-intentioned, and what could possibly go wrong? — in his view completely has mutated and infected Saban’s pristine world (allegedly?) of college football.

“A&M bought every player on their team. … We didn’t buy one player. All right?” Saban told a group of Alabama rich dudes/donors.

Nobody in the room coughed or laughed because, well, Roll Tide.

Jimbo Fisher, the accused comptroller of College Station, fired back by calling the accusations “despicable” and Saban a “narcissist” and added with glorious punctuation: “Some people think they’re God. Go dig into how God did his deal, you may find out about a guy, a lot of things you don’t want to know.”



We’ve finally arrived at that moment when SEC football coaches publicly are turning on each other. It reminds me of the old days of boxing when promoters Don King or Bob Arum would slander the other one in news conferences and basically accuse the other of borderline felonies. (My favorite Arum quote of all-time: “Yesterday I was lying. Today I’m telling the truth.”)

It always has been hard to take a grown man named Jimbo seriously, especially when he says, “I don’t cheat, and I don’t lie,” and he has a show-cause penalty on his resume.

But his greater point is accurate. Saban ain’t clean. Fisher ain’t clean. Nobody in college sports, not even your beloved Georgia Bulldogs, is clean. Nobody has been clean since Harvard went against Yale in a regatta in 1852, and it was later learned some of the “student” rowers actually weren’t students at all, and they were enticed to participate with all-expenses paid, two-week vacations.

Actually, here’s some truth: This may be as clean as college football has ever been.

Why? Because now it’s all out in the open. Before it was in the shadows. As Fisher said in December on the Paul Finebaum radio show: “There was a lot of NIL deals going on before all this was going on. They just weren’t legal. No one told nobody.”

I, like many in the media, have had football and basketball coaches tell on other coaches in off-the-record conversations. It’s always safer to do so with the cover of “off the record” because it limits the chances of return fire. (“I recruited against that guy and that’s the dirtiest mother ****er I’ve ever met,” one former SEC coach, who later went to the NFL, said to me about another SEC coach.)

Now it’s all out in the open. Recruits, emboldened by sudden freedom of movement and marketing power, are being lured to programs with the promise of five- and six-figure NIL deals. Good for them. We’re in an era when nearly two dozen head coaches are making more than $5 million. Georgia’s Kirby Smart is on the verge of a new contract that further will cement financial security for generations of little Smarts. Conferences rake in millions from television and licensing deals. Athletes should get a piece of that. A line of successful lawsuits has affirmed that.

True, endorsement deals technically can’t be used as enticements in recruiting. Good luck enforcing that fuzzy boundary.

Saban says nothing publicly unless he believes there will be a desired effect. He’ll rip the media for saying his team is great when he wants to bring his players and expectations down a few notches. He’ll praise opponents with the hope of luring them into a false sense of security. In this case, he wants to stir the masses and implore the NCAA to implement legislation that can reign in this financial free-for-all.

But this isn’t about all that. What it’s really about is him losing an advantage he has had since arriving at Alabama in late 2007. Because if Saban really wants someone to blame for all this, he can start with himself.

When he was at LSU, he built a huge support staff and was paid handsomely. He won a national championship and two SEC titles in five seasons. He scratched an itch in the NFL with Miami and hated it. (Falcons owner Arthur Blank was interested in Saban but backed off when he was told Saban would want complete control and wasn’t much of a consensus seeker.)

After two years with the Dolphins, Saban returned to college, where he took his Baton Rouge blueprint to the next level because Alabama let him. He soon became the highest-paid coach in football by a mile. The support staff: massive. The program’s well of resources: bottomless.

The Crimson Tide won. Big. The arms race was on. Facilities. Staffing. Seven-figure salaries for offensive and defensive coordinators, who suddenly had no reason to look to the NFL for career advancement. National dominance of the SEC followed.

The conference waved its flag: “It just means more.” Not true. It just costs more.

Smart brought Saban’s blueprint to Athens. Fisher couldn’t quite bring it to Florida State because of the school’s economics, but he certainly can do it at Texas A&M.

A couple of days before his comments in Birmingham, Saban went on Finebaum’s show to lob a test grenade. He said NIL threatened the “parity” in college football: “Everything in college football has always had parity, same scholarships, same academic support, health care, whatever it is.”

It was a laughable comment for anybody who had been paying attention.

Said Fisher, who worked for Saban at LSU: “The parity in college football that he’s been talking about? Go talk to coaches who’ve coached for him. You’ll find out all the parity. Go dig into wherever he’s been.”

Saban is correct about a few things. He’s right that NIL and collectives impact recruiting. He’s right that things are a little bit out of control. He’s right that it’s probably not a sustainable model.

It won’t be long before a recruit signs for a relative enormous signing bonus, gets upset because he doesn’t play much as a freshman, then transfers and makes more money. One of the collective’s sugar daddies will get upset. Maybe there will be lawsuits. Maybe a donor will think twice about “investing” heavily in players in the future.

But all that might take a while. Until then, settle in. Saban, Fisher and all of the SEC’s coaches will be together for spring meetings in a few weeks in Destin. It should be a lovely team photo. Like boxing, maybe it should go on pay-per-view."

 
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