Saban Deserves the Media Criticism Thrown His Way

I once asked Bill Cowher what he thought about some of his head coaching colleagues declaring their assistants off limits to the media. He laughed out loud and said half the head coaches in the league probably would still be toiling as anonymous assistants, including himself, if their bosses had muzzled their staffs. He also thought it would be downright insulting to his own coaches to adapt any such policy, as if they didn't have the good sense to know how to temper their own public comments about the team or the opposition.

Saban was able to get away with such foolishness during his days as a head coach at Michigan State and LSU, where the home town press surely was a tad friendlier to the local college football team and far more compliant in going with the program set forth by the martinet in charge. Saban likely will use the same Neanderthal policies at Alabama, where he was greeted like a conquering hero when he showed up to take the job last week. Videotape of hugs and kisses planted on Saban's smiling face from adoring fans aired that night on all the South Florida television stations, accompanied by some rather savage commentary from local TV broadcasters who have been raging at Saban for days.

Over the last week, I've heard Saban lambasted on the air and in print as a loser, a liar, a bum, a cheat, a wimp, a fraud, a failure, an egomaniac, a hypocrite -- and that was the good stuff. ESPN radio and television talker Dan Le Betard, also a sports columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote that the bottom line on Saban's departure was that he "couldn't impact the pro game with all his genius and all his arrogance and all his condescension and all his coaches and all his self-help infomercial yammering and all of Wayne Huizenga's money. So he fled."

For two years here, Saban also had babbled incessantly and rather condescendingly about the importance of honor, integrity, loyalty, mental toughness and accountability. How's this for honesty, loyalty and integrity?

Saban didn't even have the stones to tell his own Dolphins assistants face to face that he was leaving. Instead, he gave them the news by speaker phone.

How's this for integrity and accountability? In his opening remarks in Tuscaloosa, he savaged the Dolphins personnel department (many hand-picked by him), saying "the personnel people in the building, that's how you gain an advantage. When you look at the teams that have really good personnel people in the building that are doing what the coaches want them to do, finding the kind of players the coaches want them to find, they have success ... Everybody has to be loyal and obedient to do what you want done."

So what's wrong with this picture? Excuse me, but Saban had total authority over the entire football operation, personnel included. He had more assistant coaches than any team in the league other than the Redskins, had a huge player acquisition budget and, oh yes, had the final say on every player drafted and signed in free agency. But nooooo, it wasn't his fault the Fins floundered. It was all the other incompetents in the building.

Oh please.

The good news is that no one in South Florida was buying any of it, especially the lies, and more lies.

Alex Marvez, who covered the team for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and is a regular on a popular local radio sports talk show, probably said it best in talking about Saban's Pinnochio personality.

"It's thinking the way George Costanza used to think on Seinfeld,"

Marvez said on the air. "Costanza would say it's not a lie if you believe it."

But that's not how anyone in these tropical parts looks at Nick Saban these days.

Liar and loser seem to be the operative and most appropriate media phrases, save for the Tuscaloosa crowd. Still, a couple of losses to Auburn down the road, and it may apply there, as well. We can only hope.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or Badgerlen@aol.com.