By Scott Salomon
Coach Prime might have worked with Nick Saban on the AFLAC commercials that we see on television, but that is as close as he will ever get to being in the same sentence as the Greatest College Coach that ever roamed the sidelines.
Riddle me this Batman. When the initial list of possible replacements for Saban came out why was Prime on that list? Prime has done nothing in his one year of Power 5 football that qualified him to take over a finely-tuned championship caliber football team like the University of Alabama.
Stephen A. Smith, he of the Jason Whitlock feud, actually took to the platform formerly known as Twitter and rallied for Sanders to take over Alabama football.
.@stephenasmith wants to see Deion Sanders replace Nick Saban at Alabama 👀 pic.twitter.com/H372NQ9gyd
— First Take (@FirstTake) January 12, 2024
Make no mistake about it, Coach Prime is not a good football coach and certainly does not qualify to take over for Nick Saban. They might be good friends and he might know Miss Terry (Nick’s Wife), but he could not carry Saban’s briefcase and should never have been mentioned as a possible successor to the seven-time champion coach.
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Stephen A. Smith: Deion Sanders should replace Nick Saban at Alabama https://t.co/SuMAOA402B
— College Football (@CollegeFootball) January 12, 2024
My colleague Kyle Golik authored a story about who might be hired, if Hell Froze Over. That is a list that Prime should be on. The only way that he might be able to succeed at getting the Alabama job is if the top 75 coaches ahead of him in the FBS all died or retired at the same time.
Prime is all glitz and glamour and might get some rappers to attend games and stand on the sidelines in Boulder, but can you see that happening in Tuscaloosa? From the ghost of Bear Bryant to the statute of Nick Saban, heads would roll and Prime would get ran out of town faster than Billy The Kid, the cowboy, not the King of the Sun Belt Conference.
When the speculation hit that FSU coach Mike Norvell, who is probably the best coach to hit Florida State since Bobby Bowden was a strong candidate for the Alabama job, people were speculating as to who would replace Norvell. Prime was mentioned as a possible candidate for that job simply because he played there.
Forget the fact that Prime won’t admit that he went to school at Florida State, but denigrates the University every chance he gets. He is quick to mention that he went to an HBCU to finish his degree and won’t even utter the name Florida State University. Prime is just not qualified to take over the Dadgum Florida State Seminoles.
Let’s look at Prime’s resume for his one year in the former Power 5.
He started out 3-0 and proved that he might know how to coach a little bit and then reality set in.
He lost eight of his last nine games and blew a 29-0 lead against Stanford of all teams. The Coach Prime experiment has failed so far in Boulder, just as I predicted before the season started. One can only imagine the sideshow that he would bring to Tuscaloosa. He would not get the Southern Belles and the Southern Gentlemen to move to Biggie or Tupac and Lil’ Money would not be welcome on their sideline.
We all know that Prime likes to build through the Portal so he rents kids for a year or two after some other coach developed them and the player becomes a plug and play at their respective position. He invests no time in high school recruiting because he is such a bad football coach that he cannot mold and develop his own talent. He can’t recruit and that was evident when he only signed six players on Early Signing Day in December.
He is good at raiding other team’s retreads and disappointments, but he cannot mold a blue-chip high school star and get them ready to play modern college football. You want an example? Just take a look at Cormani McClain. He poached him from the University of Miami on Early Signing Day and he became a Buffalo two months later. McClain was the top ranked cornerback in the country and he wanted to develop and hone his skills with Prime, who like McClain, was a top cornerback in his prime.
Until Travis Hunter went down with an injury, McClain never saw the field and when he did, you could see that he was not ready. When Hunter came back, McClain returned to the bench and it is only a matter of time before he hits the portal.
I have said it all along. Coach Prime is not a coach. He is shtick, a Broadway act, a brand. He does not deserve to mentioned in the same breath as Nick Saban, unless you include the AFLAC duck. As for Mike Norvell, they both rely on the portal, but Norvell is capable of high school recruiting and is a proven winner.
Coach Prime was a loser in his first year in major college football and things do not look like they will improve much at Colorado. I am not so sure that Kalen DeBoer will be able to take over for Saban, but he will lead the Crimson Tide with respect, discipline and will strive for perfection.
Oregon Coach Dan Lanning hit the nail on the head before the Colorado game when he said that they (Colorado) play for clicks and Oregon plays for wins. Deion is nothing but a click, a sideshow, a distraction.
Dan lanning said all this just to leave his Oregon players for more money and “ clicks “ at Alabama yet if a player transfers he’s clowned for running from adversity https://t.co/lH4A0uqBkL
— John (@iam_johnw) January 11, 2024
What Alabama needed was a top-flight football coach and they got on in DeBoer and would have gotten a circus clown in Coach Prime.
Alabama would have hated the circus. They don’t play for clicks, they play for national championships.
