The SEC takes great glee in announcing how many credentials it issues for its annual Media Days — this year’s total was a record 1,267 — but what outsiders don’t grasp is that such a number isn’t crammed into one spot at any one time. The various TV outlets have their separate rooms. Radio has a room. And we print/Internet types get the big ballroom, which can be, depending on the speaker, only 60 percent full. (Vanderbilt rarely draws a crowd.)
But for the final session on Day 4 of this year’s interminable convocation, the big ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Wynfrey was packed. Nobody, it appeared, had departed early for home. There was actually a standing-room audience on the side and in the back. Everybody wanted to see/hear the star of stars.
Given that SEC football is such a big deal (hence those 1,267 credentials), and given that every SEC coach is a pretty famous guy in his own right, it’s always a revelation to witness the separation that exists between Nick Saban and all others — and not just in the SEC but in these United States. He’s not just Alabama’s coach. He’s the only coach in the land who comes equipped with an aura. His is the nation’s biggest program, but Saban is bigger than Bama. Heck, he’s bigger than the Bear.
If not quite peers, Paul William Bryant at least had company in Valhalla — Ara Parseghian of Notre Dame; John McKay of USC; Darrell Royal of Texas; Frank Broyles of Arkansas; Woody Hayes of Ohio State; Joe Paterno of Penn State; Vince Dooley of Georgia. Nicolas Lou Saban stands alone astride his realm. If you add the national championships won by Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops and Les Miles, you only equal Saban’s total of four. Among rock guitarists, there was Jimi Hendrix and then everyone else. Among college football coaches, there’s Nick Saban and a bunch of other guys who wish they were Nick Saban.
Much in the manner of Mike Krzyzewski, likewise a four-time collegiate champion, Saban has ascended his throne less on the wings of charm than on all-conquering competence, but even Coach K has been known to crack a joke. Saban almost never smiles, and his brand of humor usually runs to veiled threats. (He concluded his Media Days address by noting that the body before him had picked the correct SEC winner only four times in 21 years, and his walk-off line was: “Just to let you know we’re evaluating you.”)
This isn’t to say he’s not a compelling presence. He is. The word “intensity” is wildly overused, but there’s no way to describe Saban in the flesh without invoking it. He walks fast, head up, eyes front. He doesn’t slow down to glad-hand or greet acquaintances. This is a man on a mission every minute of his life. When he speaks, he always has a capped bottle of water at his right hand. He eats the same thing for breakfast (two Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies) and lunch (a salad with turkey and tomatoes) every day. He eats lunch at his desk.
A GQ profile by Warren St. John quoted Saban as telling a friend, “That damn game cost me a week of recruiting.” The game in question was Alabama’s BCS title victory over Notre Dame. The manic focus that Saban brings to every facet of life is trebled when recruiting is involved. Not for nothing has Rivals ranked Alabama’s signing class No. 1 six of the past seven years. Not for nothing did South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier — who has won more SEC titles than Saban, FYI — call him “the greatest recruiter in history.”
Everybody loved Bobby Bowden, who gracious-sakes-alive’d his way to two national championships. It’s unclear whether even the folks who work for him love, or even like, Saban. They do, however, respect the heck out of him. Somehow he — and he alone — has gamed the system, and his domination could only grow with the advent of the College Football Playoff. Consider: Bama has played for (and won) three of the past five national championships; had a four-team tournament been in place, they would have made it five times in six seasons.
Even as Saban has willed himself to become more polished by success — the gravitas that attaches now wasn’t so evident when he was coaching Michigan State, or LSU for that matter — there’s still a way to know when he’s particularly riled. At media sessions around the 2012 BCS title game, Saban had all but weaned himself of saying, “A’ight?”, which is sentence-ending shorthand for “All right?” In his half-hour in Hoover last month, he loosed a dozen “A’right?”s. Then again, he arrived at Media Days having lost his past two games.
Still, he arrived and departed in what has become the Saban style. This smallish man — jealous rivals love to joke that the great coach wears lifts in his shoes — cuts the widest possible swath. He does nothing to call attention to himself, yet every eye in every room is locked on him. That manic intensity serves as a magnet. You mightn’t want to hang out with Nick Saban, but you cannot ignore him. He’s the best in the business. He might just be the best there ever was. A’right?
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