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10:38:00 PM EST
(Bank)Roll Tide
Well, they’re thrilled in Tuscaloosa. The front sports screen of the Tuscaloosa News announces in big bold letters: “Saban has landed…and Tide fans are ecstatic.” The website also announces that a special edition of the paper is ON NEWSTANDS NOW!
And, in an article penned prior to Saban’s decision to
return to the college coaching ranks, the News’ Cecil Hurt suggests that
autonomy could be a key reason why Saban would take the ‘Bama offer:
“Then there are issues
that would fall under the general heading of “control." Again, no one is
being specific, but it’s expected that Saban could expect a similar situation
at Alabama to
the one he worked under at LSU.
Here is how his agent, Jimmy Sexton (who was not available for comment on
Saturday) addressed that issue in a 2004 interview with the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
“The one thing people fail to realize is that with the way money has increased
in college football, when you are a head coach in college football, you are
your own boss," Sexton said at the time. “Yeah, there’s an athletic
director and a president. Not to take anything away from those guys because
(LSU AD) Skip Bertman and (LSU chancellor) Mark Emmert are great people to work
for at LSU, but they don’t really bother Nick Saban. They let him run the
program. He is the CEO, he is the personnel director, he is the head coach."
And, the money itself is not bad, as Saban’s reported 8-year, $32 million dollar deal makes him the highest paid coach in college football. According to Len Pasquarelli, the money (which could rise to $40 million) was the main motivation for Saban to jump the Dolphins’ ship:
“Money talks, of
course, and it always will. An eight-year contract at $32 million fully
guaranteed, and with the ability to earn an additional $700,000-$800,000
annually in bowl game and national title incentives, which ESPN.com has
reported as Saban's deal at Alabama, doesn't just talk. It screams.
In terms of guaranteed money, that's nearly $20 million more than Saban would
have banked had he stayed with the Dolphins.
Colleges could always offer coaching candidates more in terms of a more benign
lifestyle, shorter hours, a less grinding existence, tenure, security and
organizational control. Now that college programs can be so competitive
financially, there won't be so many coaches casting covetous glances at the NFL.”
Pasquarelli doesn’t see anything wrong with Saban’s decision to bolt. After all, nothing in his five year contract with the Dolphins precluded such a move and, Pasquarelli says, Saban warned Dolphins’ owner Wayne Huizenga two years ago that he might eventually get the itch to return to college coaching.
Dan Le Batard, of the Miami Herald, emphatically disagrees. To put it mildly.
Le Batard writes:
“The punctuation on
the Nick Saban Error is greasy and greedy. You know what he was as Dolphins
coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins
owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave
Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little
in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than
this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.
Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.
Maybe Saban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few
days, he has looked like a complete and utter amateur.
He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the
franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower
than that. And for this he'll get a $25 million raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you
wonder what USC's Pete Carroll or Ohio
State's Jim Tressel are worth, doesn't it?
Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. Saban, a
duplicitous one, gets the most lucrative job in college football.
Saban could have fixed his reputation today if he had that mental toughness he
is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now.
About ''competitive character'' and ''overcoming adversity'' and blah, blah,
blah. You preach it, Nick. But you don't live it. Not when it's easier to run
away and hide.”
As I’ve discussed before, there is a double standard in sports coverage when it comes to the question of money as a motivating factor: athletes are held to a higher standard than coaches and owners, more readily attacked for chasing the almighty dollar than are non-players. In a variation on this theme, while calling a Bobby Knight game recently, Dick Vitale was complaining about exemptions to the transfer rules that allow players to switch schools and play immediately under certain circumstances. Vitale regards this as unfair, since coaches might groom a player for three years, only to fail to reap the benefits of their hard work if the player leaves for another school. Of course, coaches leave contracts and switch schools all the time. But again, unlike players, they are not expected to be loyal to something other than their own well-being. Le Batard is attuned to this issue, and sounds off on it in relation to Saban:
“Remember how mad you were when Williams retired? Well, he wasn't cheating on you. He wasn't grabbing for more money. His body hurt from a beating, and he wanted to rest. What Saban has done is a more traitorous act -- the most traitorous act in the history of the franchise. He's leaving simply because he couldn't handle a hard job on the sidelines of a game in which he asks others to be violent. He gave up, in other words.”
Le Batard also wonders whether Huizenga will go after Saban with the “cutthroat zeal” with which he tried to recoup some of the money he’d paid out to Williams. Le Batard’s pissed, but he goes a little overboard when he says that Saban made Huzienga look like a “public fool” and that:
“Huizenga has given this man everything he has wanted -- given him more than any NFL owner anywhere has given any other coach. He deserves better than this. He deserves better than Saban leaving him to answer the hard questions today.”
It should be recalled that Huzienga, one-time owner of the Marlins and still owner of pro player stadium, has subjected the Marlins to the worst lease deal of any team in Major League baseball. The Marlins play in a tough baseball market anyway, but Huizenga’s own cutthroat greed is one reason why they languish financially. In other words, it’s a tough sell to ask readers to pity a slash-and-burn billionaire who himself isn’t above playing every angle to earn another buck.
From a somewhat more detached perspective, MSNBC’s Mike Celizic says:
“If I’m Nick Saban, I take the Alabama job. It’s not a tough call, either, not for someone like Saban who is confident of his ability to produce a winner. He can either deal with the ebb and flow of fortune in the salary-capped NFL, or he can be the man who restored a great football program to the glory it last knew under the legend that was Bear Bryant.”
But, Celizic adds, there is a cost, given how Saban’s conducted himself:
“The only downside — with the alumni and boosters promising to come up with as much as $40 million to insure the prosperity of the Saban clan — is that with Saban taking the job, he’ll always be known as a lying weasel, a condition that will pass nationally in a couple of weeks but will endure for as long as he lives in Miami.
The charge will be true, and there’s no sense trying to sugar-coat it. Saban spent the last two months of the NFL season telling Miami and the world that coaching the Dolphins was the only job he wanted and he intended to be there for as long as the team kept sending him paychecks.”
One question in my mind is this: is Saban (or any coach)
worth it? There’s little doubt that Saban knows what he’s doing at the college
level. But, $32-40 million is a lot of money. And, the Tuscaloosa News has some
interesting data on the revenues generated by ‘Bama football. Christopher Walsh
begins by pointing out that in the National Championship game alone, the
combined payout is $34 million. Of course, that’s money that OSU and Florida
will split with the other teams in their conferences and “With nine SEC teams
receiving bowl invitations, including two in the Bowl Championship Series, the
conference is already on target to exceed last year’s record $116.1 million
payout under its revenue-sharing plan.”
Overall, according to data Walsh presents, total ‘Bama football revenues in 2005 were $62.3 million, and net revenues clocked in at $12.5 million. This made the Tide program the fifth most profitable in America in 2005, behind only Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Texas.
These figures make one thing clear: ‘Bama certainly doesn’t need to spend this much money on a coach, when its football program is bringing in so much cash and so much of its revenue is generated by the mere fact that it plays in the SEC – not for financial reasons anyway. There will be some financial benefit to greater success on the field, but it’s doubtful that the success will yield additional revenues in excess of the difference between what Saban makes and Mike Shula made.
In any event, I am guessing Saban will live with being called a weasel by guys like Le Batard. He may be one, but in the world of big-time athletics, college and pro, Saban’s wading in a stream that’s full of ‘em.
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