Skip Bayless is Wrong About Alabama Football, Defense and Nick Saban
By David Wasson
Alabama football coach Nick Saban doesn’t know defense? No, Skip Bayless, you’re kinda bigly incorrect on that one.
There is a phrase in this here Alabama football website business that I personally loathe: clickbait.
Full disclosure: We do it here from time to time at BamaHammer.com, breaking up long pieces of information into multiple pages to make things more easily digestible. And to get five times as many clicks. The corporate bosses like the clicks. They can make dollars out of it, so I am told.
Anyway, clickbait for clickbait’s sake is what I really loathe.
And Skip Bayless is the mouth-breathing, fancy-haircut, televised version of clickbait.
Maybe you’ve heard of – or just heard – Bayless. He was and is the fairer version of the oft-duplicated trope on cable sports networks these days: two guys yelling at each other with a moderator in the middle. Once at ESPN, and now on some network I really have to search for on my Comcast remote, Bayless brays at various moons hoping that the law of large numbers renders one of his opinions correct every now and then.
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Apparently Bayless (and I’m taking the innerwebs’ word on this one, as Bayless’ network is somewhere in the quadruple digits for me …) on Tuesday claimed that Alabama football coach Nick Saban isn’t a defensive wizard.
Yes. You read that correctly.
College football analyst Joel Klatt was on the Bayless show buried somewhere in the Siberia of the cable universe, defending Alabama and particularly head coach Nick Saban against Bayless, who continues to be unimpressed with the Alabama football “bend but don’t break” style of defense.
Klatt, however, stated that Saban is “the best coach in America. Period.”
But Bayless doesn’t hold the same belief as Klatt that the Crimson Tide’s defense, led by Saban, is top notch. He listed off games that he believed Alabama’s defense struggled, and was critical of Saban in the process.
“His calling card is defense? Baloney it is,” Bayless told Klatt.
OK. Stop right there.
Look, if Bayless followed up this deranged “hot take” with a disclaimer of “Look, all the guy does is process an entire conference and win national championships at a record pace …”, I would silently nod my head and go about determining if Alabama will beat Auburn by 60 or 65 this weekend.
But Bayless isn’t saying that. Instead, he apparently has lost his meds at some point this week and gone completely off the reservation of logical thought.
Nick Saban doesn’t know defense? That’s like saying the sun doesn’t rise in the East and set in the West. Or that ice is cold and the red stove-top coil is hot. Or like saying ESPN didn’t find Bayless irreplaceable when he hitched his wagon to cable Death Valley.
What exactly IS Saban’s calling card, Skip? We use national championships for doorstops around here. Nick Saban has put enough guys in the league every year from his defense that NFL couts practically own condos off Bryant Drive.
Ask Leonard Fournette about Alabama’s defense.
Ask Philip Fulmer, Tommy Bowden, Gene Chizik, Mark Richt, Les Miles, Urban Meyer and any other coach who involuntarily traded a headset for a seat at a desk like yours about Alabama’s defense.
Ask ANYONE who has played Alabama in the past 10 years about Alabama’s defense.
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There are few undisputed truths left in the world. In order of global importance …
No. 1: The IRS is always right.
No. 2: It is proper to open Christmas presents on Christmas morning.
No. 3: Nick Saban knows defense.
And now, apparently, we can add a fourth truth:
No. 4: Skip Bayless is an undisputed idiot.