The more Deion Sanders saw himself as Nick Saban, the more Saban saw himself on the golf course.
College football history was written, hammer and chisel, by control freaks, America’s most beloved dictators. The tails wag all the dogs now, and that’s gotta drive Saban cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
ESPN, which used to hide behind giant curtains like the great and powerful Oz, pulling levers and scamming Emmys, has two hands on the sport’s steering wheel and is about to drive this puppy to Crazytown. TV execs redrew vertical, logical, contiguous, storied conferences into horizontal, bastardized, coast-to-coast, junior AFCs and NFCs, a sport where the sun never sets. Prep superstars want the money upfront. Every inmate in the game’s asylum expects a car and a room key.
Yet Coach Prime’s affection for Saban, who announced his retirement from Alabama football a few days back, is charming and genuine, if occasionally deluded. The public nadir hit probably three summers ago. When a reporter during a Zoom call referred to Sanders, then at Jackson State, by his first name, Coach Prime got all up in the scribe’s grill.
“You don’t call Nick Saban, ‘Nick,’” Sanders said. “Don’t call me, ‘Deion.’”
(When asked about this exchange afterward, Saban quipped, “I respond to just about anything. I’ve been called just about everything … it’s not something important to me.”)
Deion thinks he’s Nick. He’s not. A 4-8 coach who demands Saban space, Saban respect, Saban gravitas, Saban access, and Saban sycophancy doesn’t blow a 29-point halftime lead to Stanford at home. When winning doesn’t happen, the goalposts for what counts as “winning” get yanked from the turf and reseeded to fit the narrative.
But the best coaches know best what they don’t. For all the lessons that Coach Prime cribbed from Saban and his Bama dynasty, there’s one Uncle Nick trademark Buffs fans should hope Sanders will pay more earnest heed going forward.
His coordinators.
His play-callers. The guys who move the chess pieces on game day. The guys who should be making him look like the smartest guy in the room on Saturday night.
Saban’s Hall-of-Fame resume stands on its own, as do the man’s gridiron bona fides. But it takes a village, even in Tuscaloosa.
And here were Saban’s offensive coordinators with the Tide, in rough chronological order: Major Applewhite, Jim McElwain, Doug Nussmeier, Lane Kiffin, Brian Daboll, Mike Locksley, Josh Gattis, Sarkisian again, Bill O’Brien, Tommy Rees.
His defensive coordinators, also in rough order: Kevin Steele, Kirby Smart, Jeremy Pruitt, Tosh Lupoi, Pete Golding, Charles Kelly, Steele again.
Sanders’ mantra, and thus CU’s, is that enough Jimmies and Joes from the transfer portal will make the Xs and Os immaterial. And that can work. To a point.
It works a heck of a lot better at the Power 5 level if you’ve got six or seven Travis Hunters, as Saban so often did, instead of the Buffs’ one.
Or 10 Jordan Seatons, each strong and hungry enough to push or supplant their beefy incumbents, as opposed to CU’s one.
Or relentless waves of Shedeur Sanderses, an NFL quarterback protected by an NFL offensive line, throwing to NFL targets, with a front-row seat to watch NFL defensive linemen and NFL cornerbacks pummel Vanderbilt into tiny gold leaf flakes.
As long as The Deion Experiment calls Boulder home, the Buffs are going to win the portal, win the recruiting game, win the ratings game and win the PR game, all landslides in the margins.
Winning on the scoreboard will come down to the offensive line, something CU faithful could’ve told Deion already, and how well those coordinators win their respective chess matches once the Buffs are matched up against comparable, if not superior, talent. Period.
Even as college football’s stone tablets have been replaced by whiteboards and dry-erase markers, some verities remain eternal. CU’s CFP dreams this fall will sail as far and as fast as Shedeur’s health, yes. But also by the merits of who ultimately replaces Kelly, the Buffs’ convivial but pleading former defensive coordinator who resigned his post last month to return to the SEC. With the exception of Bill Belichick, coaching trees usually don’t lie. Saban, to his credit, generally nailed that part, too.
Sure, the Prime “tree” now technically includes new San Diego State coach Sean Lewis. But if even half the whispers about Lewis’ working relationship with the Sanders family are true, that particular branch rotted from both sides. And the only thing Pat Shurmur has in common with Kiffin is an NFL pink slip.
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