By Rock Westfall
Retired Alabama football coach Nick Saban has finally admitted the true reasons for hanging it up. In an ESPN article by Chris Low, Saban confessed that age and constant staff turnover were factors. But college football’s new culture of selfish, entitled, privileged players was the ultimate reason.
Thorns With Roses
In the ESPN article, Saban admitted age was a factor that was turning negatively against him. He conceded to not quite having the same level of energy. Equally important, recruiting prospects and assistant coaching candidates wanted assurances that he would be around for several more years. Saban, 72, refused to make false promises. Thus, he faced the danger of falling behind other programs based on age.
Saban was also quoted as taking pride in how the 2023 Crimson Tide rallied from a slow start to beat Georgia and claim the SEC championship. Alabama also qualified for the College Football Playoff against Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Saban said he was “not sure I’ve had a team that improved more over the course of the season.”
In the CFP, Alabama led Michigan 20-13 with 5:49 to play before uncharacteristically failing to close, losing an overtime heartbreaker 27-20.
After the loss, Saban admitted to ESPN that he was disgusted by the antics of many Alabama players. He said that players “showed their ass” and were “throwing helmets,” etc. The lack of class demonstrated by his players was a bitter disappointment to Saban.
https://twitter.com/CFBLounge/status/1765406753871609879
“Me” Culture – The Retirement Light Bulb Pops On
Despite the loss to Michigan and the poor sportsmanship of many Alabama players, Saban was upbeat about the 2024 season. Saban told Low that he “thought we could have a hell of a team next year.”
However, Saban was also quoted in the ESPN article saying that “70 to 80 percent of his players” had other priorities above the team’s future success. They demanded assurances of playing time and being paid.
Saban was taken aback by this new selfish player mentality. Saban said the Alabama program was about developing and educating players on and off the field and setting them up for productive futures. He lamented that he could no longer develop meaningful relationships with his players because of the sport’s new Me First culture.
At this point, Saban was quoted as having confessed to himself, “Maybe this doesn’t work anymore.”
Player priorities and attitudes have dramatically changed, and now it’s all about the bag and hitting the portal in a huff if a player doesn’t get his way. Saban told ESPN that is not what Alabama was all about, at least in his tenure.
After the letdown of those player meetings, Saban and his wife took their annual postseason trip to Florida to unwind and assess their future. After the trip, Nick Saban, the GOAT of college football coaching, decided to retire.
https://twitter.com/SchrodyBach/status/1765408408218312999
A New Low Tide
When one of college football’s Mount Rushmore giants turns his back on coaching, ironically after arguably the greatest coaching performance of his career, you have a problem.
You do not have to be a Nick Saban fanboy to lament the loss of the legendary champion. College football is lesser without his presence on the sideline. But Saban’s retirement is a warning of college football’s entry into the danger zone.
The fabric of the game is being shredded daily. This space has warned of the potential of college football’s fall, just as it has risen to be the clear number-two most popular sport to the NFL.
There are several sports that tell us what could happen to college football.
Major League Baseball’s inability to stabilize its finances and competitive balance turned it into a niche sport. NASCAR went from meteoric growth to dead in the minds of millions of its former fans because of constant rules and schedule changes that tore at its historic roots. The NBA forgot that it was a sport, losing millions of fans who sought basketball entertainment but got political lectures and elitist pop culture instead. College basketball went from being highly popular to an annual three-week event of gambling and brackets each March because of revolving door rosters that were impossible to track.
Today, most college football players don’t care about tradition, history, school colors, songs, or even the concept of a team. Instead, it is all about cash and loyalty only to self.
https://twitter.com/DickieV/status/1765609496229875802
College Football Was Never Meant to Be a Store-Brand NFL
College football’s entire appeal was that it was not the NFL. It was not about the bag. Instead, it was about tradition, history, education, the development of youth into productive citizens, ancient rivalries, and raw passion. Fans would get to know players over several years and track their progress, taking pride in their success. Many would weep on Senior Day introductions.
College football was about marching bands and fight songs sung by multiple generations. It was about road trips to ancient, historic, iconic venues.
In college football, fans may storm the field and tear down goalposts for simply beating a rival, regardless of whether a championship was on the line. An otherwise losing team can make its season simply by beating a hated archrival or upsetting a national power.
Otherwise, meaningless games often have historic trophies such as the Old Oaken Bucket, Paul Bunyan’s Axe, Floyd of Rosedale, or the Little Brown Jug on the line. Winners will take these artifacts to bars and little farm towns to celebrate with fans.
This unique culture is not what the NFL is made of. But it is being obliterated for the TV money of expanded playoffs. Now, these cultural attractions are rapidly becoming obsolete.
Once upon a time, College Football ended on New Year’s Night with the Orange Bowl. And if there were two or three national champions, America and the sport somehow survived.
The game had the best regular season in sports but is forsaking that for playoff greed. Now, the schedule will drag deep into January, with games to be played at sterile, generic, antiseptic NFL cash cows masquerading as football stadiums. Multiple games in faraway lands make it unaffordable and inconvenient for nearly all fans to attend playoff games.
https://twitter.com/DDowd3ll/status/1765390604228305079
How Did We Get Here? – Who Is to Blame?
The Players “Rights” movement is winning in a rout. And it is ruining the sport. As John F Kennedy said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” There are many fathers for the current college football state of affairs and the romp of Player “Rights.”
The NCAA combined tone-deaf arrogance and fecklessness for an utterly worthless governing body. The conferences and member schools did not know when to say when regarding how to stop ceding autonomy to the TV networks. The TV networks, led predominately by northeastern big city pro sports types, have no appreciation for and profound ignorance of college football’s cultural traditions and history, instead demanding an NFL model. Finally, the college football media wanted to “stick it to the man” and succeeded, to the point of threatening the fabric of the game. Players “Rights” became a civil rights cause celebre. Now it’s a cancer on the sport.
In this space, we have advocated positive solutions to the sport’s reckless binge on self-destructing. But the sport and its enablers are blinded by the Almighty Dollar, as are its pampered, entitled, spoiled players.
https://twitter.com/PistolRick/status/1630695228557459465
The Adults Are Vacating the Building
College football just lost one of its few remaining adults and quite possibly the smartest man in the room.
Perhaps Nebraska’s Matt Rhule can take the mantle by his example of building an uncompromised culture. Maybe Eli Drinkwitz of Missouri, Lance Leipold of Kansas, or Chris Kleiman of Kansas State can lead by example. Their successful programs are built on a culture of work ethic and traditional college football values.
Additionally, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney originally saw the future and thought that it would not work. Swinney is another alternative to college football’s leadership void.
Ironically, college football’s self-induced heart attack might only be arrested by the Heart of America. Regardless, college football is most likely to get worse before it gets better.
The game now resembles what an American military officer said of an old Vietnam Village, stating, “We must destroy it to save it.”
And so it must be.
https://twitter.com/mfarrellsports/status/1763405406548750812
