Alabama football coach Nick Saban was ready to start getting ready for the 2013 season right after the BCS Championship victory in Miami.
Alabama football coach Nick Saban was ready to start preparing for the 2013 season right after the BCS Championship victory in Miami.

Tell me if you have heard this one before—Nick Saban is Darth Vader…only meaner. Nick Saban makes people cry. The Alabama football coach doesn’t smile; The Alabama football coach doesn’t engage in BS sessions; The Alabama football coach doesn’t have a soul.

And so the narrative goes. Perpetrated by some in the local and regional media, this view of Nick Saban lingers. Saban’s distant personality combined with his icy reaction to being doused with Gatorade in the closing minutes of the 2009 national championship game against Texas has helped support the narrative.

The latest report of Saban’s lack of personality comes from a Florida website. According to 247’s Gatorbait, Florida offensive line coach Tim Davis called Nick Saban “the devil himself” and said, “(Muschamp’s) like the other guy, only he’s got a personality…He’ll smile at you. He’ll talk to you.”

Bully for Will Muschamp and his staff. You just look at Muschamp and can see the warm heart. He shows it so well on the sideline right between all the F words and other swearing.

What this type of presentation does is warp our perception of successful coaches. Will Muschamp is very similar to Nick Saban—they both hold people accountable. For that reason, many people will consider these men to be, in the vernacular, dicks. Nobody wants a boss to yell at him or fuss at him when he fails to do his job. Nobody wants a boss to make sure he does his work. This is a big reason so many coaches get tired of working for the top coaches in the game. It is a big reason that Saban prefers younger, hungrier assistants instead of big, fat, lazy, entitled coaches entering the middle-to-end of their respective careers. That isn’t to say all older coaches are lazy—for proof see Joe Pendry while at Alabama, etc.

However, there is more to this spin regarding Saban. The teams voicing it the loudest tend to be teams most threatened by Alabama.

Who can forget Auburn’s credo during the Gene Chizik regime. Every Auburn coach and fan was screaming, “It is FUN to play at Auburn.”

Fun was code for “No rules.” It was intended as a recruiting philosophy. It yielded bitter results. The Auburn program is a joke today and a punch line regarding NCAA compliance. The stench around the Auburn program is so bad, the Tigers were forced to hire a former assistant coach on Chizik’s staff instead of a marquee name. This former assistant coach was so committed to strict discipline he took a former Auburn running back at Arkansas State who was involved in a whole mess of trouble at Auburn. Sure, the star RB was kicked off the team, but not before embarrassing his new program during the offseason by having a “handgun and a substance believed to be marijuana in the car,” according to reports.

Unlike Auburn, Florida has a coach in control of the program. Simply put, Muschamp will not let the inmates run the asylum.

However, it is interesting when a coach trots out the old Nick Saban is a mean guy theme. Sure it gets cheap laughs, but sometimes is reveals deeper issues within a program.

6 thoughts on “Florida assistant coach mocks Alabama football coach Nick Saban”

  1. I get that some people can’t handle a good, hard leader, or that they might even hate a coach from a rival team, even if they’re in another division of the conference.

    But the Devil himself?

    Like, Saban does a lot of good with Nick’s Kids, with fundraisers, with the university itself, but forget all that, let’s go with it and say you hate the guy. You hate the guy with a passion more powerful than the heat of a thousand suns. Fine. Call him names then.

    But the Devil? The Lord of Darkness? The root of all evil. Really? Nick Saban? Why do so many people use that term to describe him? I don’t get it. It’s so outrageously extreme that it goes over the edge of disrespectful and blasphemous. Seriously, the devil himself?

    It just sounds like such a little-brother, under-achiever thing to say. I’d like to think the devil himself would be more rude to fellow coaches and assistants, but instead he’s always complimenting them and saying how much he respects them as coaches. The devil, indeed, right?

    Good grief. Roll Tide.

  2. And I would bet – if Tim Davis continues to blow off like this instead of working like a mother to get his players in game shape (sort of like what he is railing against) – that he won’t be on Boomer’s staff for very long. CNS has set a new standard for what is acceptable from the head coach and from the Assistants. It’s not fun and games, it’s hard work. It’s hard work all year long. There’s not a lot of time for duck hunting or taking in that 2 weeks in Cancun with your girl. Work. And coaches who don’t want to work sit back and mouth off about the ones who will, and see their seasons – and their careers – end earlier. Wanna work in the SEC and stick around? You better be more like CNS than the blowhards in the Big 12, or you will find yourself in a mid-level school – or back in the high school ranks – getting your summers off and doing a lot of fishing. And your football season will be over around Thanksgiving each year.

  3. Just checking to see if my new avatar is working. However, you know you are too successful when your peers hate you. bwaa Haww haww! RTR!

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