Nick Saban: Man, Myth, U-Haul Stockholder

ESPN reports today that Nick Saban - former coach at too many places to list and likely owner of a substantial amount of stock in U-Haul, allowing him to get out of town at a moment’s notice - signed a contract extension with the University of Alabama through 2017. Basically, he’ll now be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $4M/year, which actually isn’t a whole lot more than he was making under the old contract. Regardless, my sense is that, in Tuscaloosa, that’ll go pretty far.

Perhaps recognizing that people might be unsure of his loyalty (not to Alabama, specifically, but to any program) or of the value of his promises, Saban says, “Our acceptance of the extension expresses our commitment to the University of Alabama for the rest of our coaching career.”

My big question is this: do the good people of Alabama actually believe this? And, if so, on what basis? Really, are we to understand that his stints in Toledo, Cleveland, East Lansing, Baton Rouge, and Miami were, well, preparing him for a full and happy life lived in Tuscaloosa?!

He didn’t use the exact same words at all of his previous stops on the road to this coaching job at Alabama, but he has certainly been criticized in the past for saying a lot of things he doesn’t mean. For example, he said on December 21, 2006 that he wasn’t going to be the coach at Alabama and, on January 3, 2007, announced that he was, in fact, taking the job at Alabama.

Maybe I’m overly skeptical because I spent four years watching him coach while I was at Michigan State, only to have him ditch the team right before its Citrus Bowl appearance in 1999 so he could set up shop at LSU. But my impression - biased as it must be - is that he loves money and he loves fame. So, when some other impressive-sounding football program (Notre Dame? Dallas Cowboys? Michigan? Washington Redskins?) offers him a lot of money, I’m pretty confident he’ll be packing up the U-Haul and slinking away in the middle of the night again.

Bookmark this post and let’s talk about it in a couple of years.