Let me preface this by saying I think Nick Saban is a great football coach, possibly one of the greatest coaches in the history of the college game. Nobody is trying to slam Saban’s greatness as a builder of programs or a motivator of young men or a winner of championships. However – and I say this with all due respect – Saban needs to close his yap. Seriously.
The thing Saban said this week while trying to argue the case for college playoff games being played on bowl (i.e. Southern) sites instead of on the campuses of the higher seeded teams – all part of the on-going lukewarm war-of-words between the SEC and Big Ten over the make-up of the proposed college playoff system – was utterly preposterous, and bordered on the criminally stupid. In case you missed it, here was Saban’s exact quote:
"For some young kid from Mobile, Alabama, who has never seen snow, to have to go play a national championship game in Wisconsin — I don’t know if that’s the right thing."
Those poor kids from Mobile. That snow would absolutely traumatize them. They would never recover from the sight of all that crazy white stuff falling from the sky. They would likely curl up in the fetal position before the game could even be played, forcing their team to forfeit.
Nick Saban, you are a stooge. Again, I mean that with all due respect. Nick Saban is a great football coach. But if he were a politician running for president? He’d be one of those people who goes out early in the primary for taking some completely insane position. He’d be, I don’t know, Michele Bachmann.
And the funniest thing about it? The Big Ten isn’t even supporting the idea of on-campus playoff games. So Saban unleashed the hounds of stupid against an intruder that wasn’t even there. Clearly, Saban has spent too many years living inside the cozy confines of the big time college sports bubble. He’s one of those guys who has lost all contact with reality. Somebody get Saban a light so he can find his way out of his own butt and back to the real world.
Of course there’s another way of looking at this if you’re a Badger fan. You could be flattered that Nick Saban considers the program big-time enough to be in the conversation for possibly hosting a national title game. It’s too bad the compliment had to come wrapped in a coating of pure dumb-ass.