To be or not to be? Saban will end up paying for indecision
Nick Saban makes an unconvincing Hamlet, but then again, most coaches do. The dichotomy of always owning the room you're in while wearing the cloak of skin-searing indecision never plays well.
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| If you're an Alabama recruit, can you trust Nick Saban to stick around? (AP) |
The rumors that Saban's wife, Terry, is a driving force behind this hyper-flirtation with the Alabama job are all touching and at least quasi-believable, but there is a penalty involved with declaring your outward love and determination for a job you're not all that thrilled about it, and that is credibility. Saban said he wanted to talk only about the Dolphin job Monday, knowing full well that Alabama was fully in play both in Tuscaloosa and in his own head, which means that he was trying to play both ends against the middle.
Worse, it wasn't coming off.
Part of the problem here is, as is everything else on the planet, The Internet. The Saban-to-Alabama rumor has been in the ether since November, and it has not only persisted during Saban's denials but grown in intensity, to the point where the phrase "despite Saban's denials" has become as easy to find as, well, porn ads.
Now the 'Net is not infallible, but there are enough reputable sites out there (and people willing to use them) that Saban stopped being believable on this awhile ago. In fact, the more he said "no," the more the word was "yes," and given the fact that nobody hides dissatisfaction very well, the "yes" side became more and more plausible and eventually convincing.
So The Internet gets to take a victory lap, and we can all move on.
The other interesting twist on this tale of eye-clawing agony ("Whose money must I take?" indeed) is the idea that this isn't about money. This is, of course, stupid. Of course it's about money.
But it's also about power, and it's about comfort level. Saban will make better money at Alabama, money Alabama has to throw around. He will also have more power, because college coaches always do. And comfort level, the catch-all phrase that includes everything else from familial concerns to housing prices to restaurant access to parking, is always a malleable factor, in that it can take any shape it must to close a deal.
Saban, though, comes to Alabama not as the conquering hero, but as the guy who had everything he could possibly want in Miami but learned that without a quarterback, "everything he could possibly want" was a myth. The Dolphins got no better under Saban than they had been under Dave Wannstedt, and in fact might be slightly worse because of their commitments to one quarterback (Daunte Culpepper) whose knee isn't right and one (Joey Harrington) whose game isn't right.
And then, on a road paved with his denials, he rode out of town, an act of bad form that at least in the short term will likely hurt him in kids' homes, especially when the alternatives to Alabama in the SEC alone are so much more appealing. One man's wanderlust is another man's recruiting weapon, after all.
Would this have gone over better had he not left so many sound bites behind denying in his best coaching smug all Alabama questions? Maybe, although the possibility that he never fully comprehended Mal Moore's persuasiveness cannot be discounted. Maybe this was a late conversion to the joys of campus life.
But we doubt it. Saban tried the pro game and the big city life, didn't master either, and hit the road, pure and simple, and that kind of reservation doesn't pop up just because Alabama is willing to make him its emperor. If it hadn't been Miami, it would have been somewhere else, and if not now, then soon.
