Wow, we sure dodged a bullet in not hiring Nick Saban

[zuckercanyon]

Zucker,

Any "Rushmore" for college football coaches has to start with Bud Wilkinson, then argue about the other two spots

1st, aren't there 4? Guess we could argue the number that we need up there. Interesting that someone here would put a Sooner on the list, impressed that you said so about BW. Guess we could go by era.....

 

[Statalyzer]

While Saban has put his team in position to win as well as anyone, his 1 loss national champions have gotten favorable circumstances numerous times due to a lack of undefeated teams.

And due to their previous success/reputation. Alabama wouldn't have gotten left out with a team like Texas had in 2008, much less a team like Auburn had in 2004. Now of course he was a part of building that reputation that allowed them to always get the benefit of the doubt - but there's also no question that it isn't an unbiased system and it's the only major sport I can think of where the reputation you get from winning a title or two actually gives you a edge built into the system that helps you win future titles.

 

[SabreHorn]

There are four, I was conceding Wilkinson and Saban as two of those.

 

[zuckercanyon]

And due to their previous success/reputation. Alabama wouldn't have gotten left out with a team like Texas had in 2008, much less a team like Auburn had in 2004. Now of course he was a part of building that reputation that allowed them to always get the benefit of the doubt - but there's also no question that it isn't an unbiased system and it's the only major sport I can think of where the reputation you get from winning a title or two actually gives you a edge built into the system that helps you win future titles.

So you're labeled a winner and therefore get the benefit of the doubt. Forget bias, you put him in the CFP and he's got a better than half chance he's going to win that game.

 

[Htown77]

Urban Meyer is a winner, had a 1 loss team and got left out for OU which has never won a playoff game or won a national title since 2000. Some biases and circumstances have nothing to do with previous success. In fact, despite consistently failing in big bowl games, OU generally gets the benefit of the doubt.

 

[everette]

Snyder

 

[Joe Fan]

Newly written piece covering some old material - "How close was Nick Saban to leaving Alabama for Texas?"

Imagine having Nick Saban’s agent approach you, saying he’d like to coach for your school… and turning him down.

Such is life at Texas.

The year was 2012, and Saban had just won his third national championship at Alabama — which was an incredible accomplishment, but still put him only halfway to the peak of Mount Bear Bryant.

That’s when, according to Dallas billionaire and former UT regent Tom Hicks, Jimmy Sexton got on the phone.

“Another regent and I had the conversation with Saban’s agent and he said, ‘If Saban was a business guy, he’d be what you would call a turnaround artist. He’s not a longterm CEO. Fix it, win and go on. He knows he will never catch Bear Bryant’s legacy in Alabama, but he’d like to create his legacy that he’s won national championships at more schools than anybody else. He’s done it at LSU and Alabama, and he knows he can win a national championship at Alabama; he knows he can,'” Hicks said on Your Turn with Corby Davidson.

* * *
So, Hicks said, he met with Brown to see if he could pitch Mack on passing the torch to Saban. It didn’t go well.

“I went to see Mack two days later,” Hicks said. “We had lunch and I thought at the time he was ready to leave; he’d been telling people he was ready to leave. So I said, ‘Mack, I want to tell you about a conversation I had with Jimmy Sexton. If you want to retire, I think you can graciously have Nick Saban come in and take your place and have it be your idea. That might be a nice way for you to end it.’

“Mack Brown turned bright red. Steam started coming out of his ears, and he said, ‘That guy is not coming here to win a national championship with my players.’ I said, ‘Mack, I’m glad to see you have that passion. I didn’t think you had that passion left.”

Hicks’s version of events tracks with what Wallace Hall, a former UT regent who served with Tom Hicks’s brother Steve, told Monte Burke, author of the 2015 book Saban: The Making of a Coach.

As Burke wrote in the New York Times in 2015:

“It was out of the blue,” Hall says. “He is a U.T. alum, a very well-thought-of, very successful guy who really isn’t a huge fan of football.” The man, whom Hall has refused to name, also happened to be a good friend of Saban’s agent, Jimmy Sexton. “My friend told me, ‘I don’t know how to put this any other way: Nick Saban wants to come to Texas,’ ” Hall says.
…
After Saban’s Crimson Tide won the national title, Hall contacted Hicks directly. This time Hicks acted on it, calling on his brother Tom, a former owner of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers and the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars. “I had been in pro sports for a long time, so I volunteered to see if this was real or not,” Tom Hicks says.
​

The drama continued into 2013, when Brown hit another rock bottom point in a 40-21 loss at BYU on Sept. 7, then dropped a 44-23 home decision to Ole Miss a week later. But his Longhorns rallied, stunning Oklahoma in October and, by December, Texas played Baylor in a de facto Big 12 championship game in Waco with a Fiesta Bowl trip on the line. The ‘Horns played the heavily-favored Bears to a 3-3 tie at halftime, but Baylor pulled away in the second half, cruising to a 30-10 win, thus kicking off the most melodramatic week in Texas football history.....​

How close was Nick Saban to leaving Alabama for Texas? - FootballScoop[/SIZE]

 

[WorsterMan]

^^^^ Interesting find and a lot there I didn't know. thanks

 

[Joe Fan]

^^^^ Interesting find and a lot there I didn't know. thanks

Yeah, some people still maintain this was never true, that what this was all about was Sexton using us to get a pay raise from Alabama. But here we have quotes from the actual participants - basically everyone except Saban himself. I dont know what more evidence there is to show them. So, even if it is all 'water under the bridge,' I still say it is better to have the full story, all the facts, on the table.

 

[Austin_Bill]

If that story is true, then Mack threw the program under the bus for his own ego. Maybe he knows something about Saban that the public doesn't know, but all I Know is we went through a long dry spell that didn't necessarily have to happen.

 

[WorsterMan]

If that story is true, then Mack threw the program under the bus for his own ego.

Appears that way - I was thinking the exact same thing after reading the article....

 

[Statalyzer]

I don't think that's a fair assessment even if we assume that Saban really would for sure have come, which is still a huge assumption. He thought (and many of us did too) that he was back to the top after a bad year and declining to step down when asked to is hardly an unforgivable selfish move. I think almost everyone would have kept going rather than being fired-but-not-really-because-we-let-you-resign.

 

[Phil Elliott]

If that story is true, then Mack threw the program under the bus for his own ego.

I've been saying this was exactly what happened since it went down. I knew MB's ego would never allow a sure-fire winner like Saban follow him at UT. I still maintain that Bill Powers backed MB up on this as well such that the regents would not make a final decision against BP/MB and therefore Saban signed the extension at AL.

 

[NRHorn]

Put me down as happy that Satan didn’t come to UT, regardless of the reason.

He is a child, he acts like a child, he treats people poorly- finally couldn’t bully his way out of the way he spoke to a female sideline reporter,,, to the point it’s comical to see him stomping around like a two year old.
Folks, I have less than zero power , if there is any doubt- in a UT hiring decision. So my thoughts didn’t prevent him from coaching UT,
Still - it’s goodbye to Mr Nick. Go pedal your nonesense elsewhere.

 

[El Sapo]

“Mack Brown turned bright red. Steam started coming out of his ears, and he said, ‘That guy is not coming here to win a national championship with my players.’

Mack really shouldn't have worried - no one was going to win an NC with his roster.

I thought this Hicks stuff was common knowledge. Mack Brown went out like a petulant child and set this program back by years in the process. He thought he -was- the program and was certainly more concerned about trying to preserve his own ego and Sally-Mack-Brown-Texasfootball©™®. He hung on too long after the game had clearly passed him by, fought change when it came (which may or may not have cost us a shot at Saban), left the roster a **** show, and tried to monkey wrench recruiting on the way out the door. For fans like myself, Mack scuttled much of the goodwill and respect he had earned by leaving the way that he did.

 

[SabreHorn]

Bill,

It is more egregious than the article. Friends ask me why I don’t hold MB in high regard. This article eludes to it, but Billy Powers could have fixed it, but typical of everything he did, he humped the puppy.

MB reunited the faithful, which was a job I thought was impossible. He did win a national championship. He also did huge damage. Without his stunt, there would have been no Stevie Patterson. And no Charlie Strong.

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

I've been saying this was exactly what happened since it went down. I knew MB's ego would never allow a sure-fire winner like Saban follow him at UT. I still maintain that Bill Powers backed MB up on this as well such that the regents would not make a final decision against BP/MB and therefore Saban signed the extension at AL.

Are you saying that despite Mack being forced out he still had enough pull to dictate who his replacement wouldn't be? Not likely in my opinion.

 

[SabreHorn]

Hardly the case, but he did manipulate Powers and destroy the opportunity for a new AD and the new HC.

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

Hardly the case, but he did manipulate Powers and destroy the opportunity for a new AD and the new HC.

Then thats on Powers and whomever else not Mack.

 

[SabreHorn]

I said it was in Powers but I never expected what Brown did. I told Powers to call a press conference and announce he had fired Brown. He refused to do it. I washed my hands that day with Bill Powers.

They are both responsible for screwing The University of Texas.

 

[Phil Elliott]

Mack scuttled much of the goodwill and respect he had earned by leaving the way that he did.

Agree. I was not all that hot on him in the first place due to his regular ***-kickings at the hands of Bob Stoops. I never understood how he could keep his job after some of those embarrassments. He built up a lot of goodwill with the BMDs to tide him over, I just thought they were being awful patient even so.

Are you saying that despite Mack being forced out he still had enough pull to dictate who his replacement wouldn't be? Not likely in my opinion.

This all happened *before* he was "forced out". He was supposed to hand the reigns over to great ceremony and applause, but his ego would not allow it. In the end, I believe he agreed to go sort-of quietly so long as Nick Saban was off the table.

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

I said it was in Powers but I never expected what Brown did. I told Powers to call a press conference and announce he had fired Brown. He refused to do it. I washed my hands that day with Bill Powers.

They are both responsible for screwing The University of Texas.

And are you such a huge *** donor he should care what you think?

 

[SabreHorn]

What he did to The University of Texas is unconscionable and unforgivable. The school treated him better than any coach before him

Mack Briwn doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Quite frankly I don’t give a **** what he thinks and never will. He showed his true colors. I’m glad he’s gone, it just happened a couple of weeks too late.

The Steve Patterson/Charlie Strong debacle are clearly a result of his actions.

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

What he did to The University of Texas is unconscionable and unforgivable. The school treated him better than any coach before him

Mack Briwn doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. Quite frankly I don’t give a **** what he thinks and never will. He showed his true colors. I’m glad he’s gone, it just happened a couple of weeks too late.

The Steve Patterson/Charlie Strong debacle are clearly a result of his actions.

I can understand him not speaking ill of UT publicly as being politics but he was at the press conference when Herman was hired and had only good things to say. Actions speak louder than words. Why did he do that?

 

[SabreHorn]

He was still on payroll

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

He was still on payroll

He was on the payroll when Strong was hired and didn't attend the PC. Was his job description ammended in the interim?

 

[SabreHorn]

**** if I know I wanted him gone within 30 seconds of that infamous Saturday morning meeting in November

He remained the symbol of unification for the multiple factions from the previous four administrations.

 

[I_Dont_Exist]

**** if I know I wanted him gone within 30 seconds of that infamous Saturday morning meeting in November

He remained the symbol of unification for the multiple factions from the previous four administrations.

You don't know? Well there's a first. Being the world's leading expert on everything having to do with UT in the last 50 years is in your balliwick but now you don't know. Interesting.

 

[n64ra]

He knows he will never catch Bear Bryant’s legacy in Alabama, but he’d like to create his legacy that he’s won national championships at more schools than anybody else.

Poor Nick. Still not there....

 

[BevoJoe]

IIRC, wasn’t one of the issues with MB that The University would have to fire him if they hired Saban, which would entail paying his salary due through 2019 or there abouts? That would have been a huge drain on resources, but Brown allegedly also said or agreed if the school would not hire Saban then he would retire and collect only $250k during the period. But, I cannot attest to the truth and/or veracity of that “story”. Anyone else know anything about that?