The question is not whether Texas could have paid Saban $10M a year. Nobody debates that.
The question is whether Alabama could have paid Saban $10 M a year in a bidding war - and we no doubt could have.
Money was never going to be the issue one way or the other - but your Aggie friends reinforce that idea.
IIRC - and I won't pretend I do since I was in med school at the time and VERY busy with other things - I believe our contract offer for Fran was something like $2.2 million, and he signed with them for only maybe a fraction more. That insinuated to the Texas JR Ewing brains that we couldn't even match them in a bidding war. But, of course, the Fran thing was NEVER about money.
They carry a stereotype of Alabama as maybe one step above Jethro Bodine if that.
Texas fans here still insist that when Franchione came to ATM, he only did it because "he really wanted to come to Texas and we wouldn't hire him."
I mean.....where does that mentality arise?
But if you told these folks there are plenty of people who DO NOT have any desire whatsoever to come to Texas, they insist you're wrong. As noted above, Gary Barnett would have rather stayed with Northwestern than go to Texas. Butch Davis preferred staying on probation riddled Miami to coming to Texas. And in 2013, they went down to the B list and got Charlie Strong.
WILL MUSCHAMP preferred to flop in Florida than to stay in Texas, even though he was "the head coach in waiting."
The EVIDENCE shows there's a lot of people not exactly enthralled with the idea of Texas and their money. But good luck getting an admission from those egomaniacs.
