he wasn't lying, he was wrong. There is a difference. At the time of the comment he had not agreed to be our coach, so the statement was 100% true at the time he made it. Later, he listened to Mal and more importantly Terry and changed his mind
Yeah, that's my basic point.
The problem in the 24/7 sports cycle, though, is that nobody takes in details like that. I suspect the reason that Tommy Tuberville's departure from Oxford got swept under the rug so well (other than in MS, where they wanted to burn a cross in his yard) was because he wasn't a championship-winning coach and Saban was.
Plus, Auburn on its best day is still not Alabama.
I'll admit that Saban was the guy I really wanted as head coach, but I'll also admit that when he went that far with the denial, I wrote him off as "he's not coming here."
My favorite experience in all that was calling my brand new brother-in-law who was an LSU fan (he still is - he's just no longer my BIL, ha ha) and breaking the news to him.
Dead silence on the other end and then he told a co-worker, "Alabama got Saban."
More dead silence from the co-worker.
But nobody will ever take in the details. A couple of years ago when the Texas rumors were the hottest, I still recall fans here saying they wished he would come out and deny it. Well, we all know what would have happened if he had - they would have juxtaposed two videos of him and say, "He's done this before."
On the other hand, let's say solely for the sake of argument that he was actively lying at the time - why does anyone else even care? The only group that could conceivably even be angry about it in terms of being jilted are Miami Dolphins fans, and I've never known one who said they wish Saban was still their coach.
The fans who hold to that and talk about it are the ones covering their fear of the fact he's a damned good football coach at the collegiate level. (And you know what? He might have been in the NFL is he had stayed longer.
How many of you realize that Saban's record as NFL head coach was TWO GAMES BETTER than Bill Belichick's first two seasons?
And you can't really say that Saban took over any better of a team than Belichick did. The 2004 Dolphins were 4-12 while the 1990 Browns were 3-13, hardly a significant difference. And the Browns had been to THREE AFC title games in four years prior to that 1990 nosedive - the Dolphins hadn't.
No, I'm not saying Saban would have been Belichick - because nobody knows. But note that Belichick had five losing seasons in his first six years as a head coach before lucking into Tom Brady coming off the bench in 2001.
Ok, Jon, so I'm meandering, but I think Saban's record speaks for itself in so many ways - and I'm a guy who laughed hysterical when LSU first hired him (along with the late, great bayoutider, we both were about in stitches on the ground).
I was wrong about my initial view on Saban - and he was wrong in his statement as you say.