Alabama Football: Nick Saban and Bryan Harsin have nothing in common

Thankfully for Alabama football fans, a new season is just around the corner. When Fall Camp begins on Aug. 4, we can begin in earnest to track the Tide’s progress through practices and scrimmages, leading up to the season opener on Sept. 3.

For fans who closely follow college football 12 months out of the year, offseasons can be treacherous. On some days, not enough information exists to feed the appetites of fans. Those of us who provide content sometimes build entire stories around suppositions. We talk about what might happen, making claims and predictions. If those claims and predictions have no basis in fact, our take on a certain situation can be flawed.

Having an opinion not shared by the majority of readers is acceptable. It would be boring if we all agreed on everything. But making a claim with no basis in fact is of no value to readers.

Such a claim was recently made on an On3 video. A follow-up story, also on On3 was titled,

"‘Bryan Harsin’s situation at Auburn is similar to Nick Saban at Alabama’"

That is a catchy title. It probably attracts most Auburn fans and fans of other teams who disdain Alabama Football, Head Coach, Nick Saban.

Nothing similar to Alabama Football in 2007

The gist of the story is Bryan Harsin came into an Auburn situation similar to the one Nick Saban began with at Alabama. To explain that claim, the following statements were published by On3.

"When he (Saban) came into the program, there was a lot of booster having access they shouldn’t have. Access that was ultimately detrimental to what happened on Saturdays.(Like Harsin) Saban experienced similar pushback from boosters following his first year at Alabama in 2007."

The first sentence is accurate. The second one has no basis in fact. Any pushback from boosters following the 2007 Alabama football season was mere clutter, not worthy of Saban’s consideration, much less leading to any action by Nick.

“Similar pushback” (to Harsin bt Auburn) would have to mean that in 2007 there was an attempted coup in Tuscaloosa for the purpose of firing Nick Saban. Such a claim is nonsense. As the On3 source also stated, when Saban took over Alabama football it was,

"My way or the highway."

And that ‘way’ began before the school’s plane landed in Tuscaloosa in January 2007. Saban would have never taken the job under any other terms. In addition, then Alabama AD, Mal Moore agreed with him.

Any claim of similarity between Harsin’s situation at Auburn and Saban’s at Alabama in 2007 is delusional.

Let me be clear. On3 is an outstanding platform. I respect their work and as a subscriber, I consume their content regularly. Unfortunately, in this one case, they could not have been more wrong.