King Kaufman's Sports Daily
A badge of honor for the media: Being called a liar by a hypocrite like Nick Saban. Plus: What was that about no money for college players?
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Jan. 4, 2007 | It's amusing to read this South Florida Sun-Sentinel recap of Nick Saban's increasingly irritated denials that he had any interest in the Alabama coaching job.
They start around Thanksgiving and continue right through New Year's Day, when the Miami Dolphins coach said, "I'm committed to doing my job well here" as the i's were being dotted on his eight-year, $32 million deal to coach the Crimson Tide.
Saban has every right to take the best offer, and if Pete Prisco of CBS.Sportsline.com is correct, nobody in the Dolphins organization is terribly sad to see the dour, iron-fisted control-freak regime of Saban end in Miami.
Saban also has the right to lie to reporters. As Sun-Sentinel columnist Dave Hyde points out, coaches do that all the time, and "Saban wasn't even the biggest name in South Florida sports to lie Wednesday in South Florida." Hyde cites Pat Riley saying he's leaving the Miami Heat because he has bone chips in his knee as a bigger whopper.
But there are little white lies -- "It's not about the money," "I'm quitting to spend more time with my family," that sort of thing -- and then there's straight-up insulting the fan base, because that's who you're talking to when you're talking to reporters, who are mere proxies for the fans, conduits of information.
Saban spent weeks berating reporters, huffing at them for daring to suggest he was interested in the Alabama job, scolding that he wasn't going to respond to "rumors and innuendo."
"It really challenges your professionalism and integrity to even talk about it," he said to reporters a month ago.
Well, if anybody knows anything about challenging professionalism and integrity, it's Nick "I'm not leaving LSU/I'm not leaving the Dolphins" Saban. Or had you forgotten he pulled this same routine two years ago?
ESPN's Hank Goldberg, citing two college-coach sources, reported that Saban's agent had been sending out feelers to colleges as early as November, trying to gauge interest in a school hiring Saban. November. That's about the time Saban started upbraiding reporters for asking about rumors he might be headed to the college ranks.