Nick Saban: A Handy guide to understanding the critics
By Tony Breland
Nick Saban is the most powerful coach in the universe. You may have heard this already, if you’ve opened up a newspaper (what are those again?) or browsed the Internet for more than a few seconds. But did you also know that his last name rhymes with Satan? Or that he is paid a lot of money to coach football?
News moves fast these days, and journalists facing looming deadlines and the pressure to publish content at slave labor rates sometimes aim for the cheap seats or use shorthand to get their points across. To help you decipher some of the lazy talking points you’ll encounter when reading your Nick Saban updates, we’ve compiled a handy guide.
Nick Satan. Saban does not suffer fools gladly. He’s not a big fan of schmoozing the media types, and journalists that want to make their bones asking him what they think is a clever question. Saban generally treats the young pups that want to be the story – instead of covering the story – with the disdain they deserve. Of course, reporters always get the last word, so the butthurt spills onto the page, far from the withering glare of Saban himself.
He’s a mercenary. The rap on Nick Saban is that he’s only in this thing for the money; that he threw the Dolphins overboard and headed to Alabama with cartoon dollar signs in his eyes. Why, after all, would anyone choose a backward, Jesus-addicted hellhole like Tuscaloosa when you could be living it up in the Cuban Canada?
Saban has repeatedly stated this is his last stop. And it’s clear he prefers guiding and enriching the lives of young men, as opposed to coddling overhyped millionaires.But that doesn’t fit the narrative. The important thing is that Saban decided he could live without the NFL, at least until Draft Day.
He wins at all costs. Clearly Nick Saban is only interested in his own legend. The man demanded the University put up a statue of him, for Bear’s sake! He’s also buried bodies, suppressed arrest records and generally run all organized crime in Tuscaloosa County since he began consolidating his nefarious power.
To believe this, of course, you need to forget the fact that Alabama’s student-athletes are among the highest-scoring in the SEC, and ignore all of his charitable work.
It could be that Saban tries to handle discipline problems internally and privately, the way you’d hope your own indiscretions would be handled. It’s not like he’s covering up a child prostitution ring to protect his image or anything.
He hates the media. Here’s the big one. The script usually goes like this:
Assembled media wags spend a few minutes poking Saban with a stick;
Saban tires of it and unleashes a critique of the pencil-pushers;
Dozens of columns are written about Saban the Meanie yelling at the poor defenseless English majors;
Profit?
Those covering the sport often see themselves as part of the story, as evidenced by some mistaking yesterday’s press conference as being directed at them. Saban sees the media as a necessary evil, and a tool to be used to deliver messages; in this case to his own team.
Keep all this in mind as you sift through the stories you’ll read between now and the BCS Championship game, where once again we’ll begin reading the columns speculating that Saban will be leaving Alabama for the highest bidder.
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