Aging like a fine wine

Hey, 70-year old Nick Saban wants you to know he’s discovered something.

Alabama coach Nick Saban believes college football is heading down the path of megaconferences.

During an appearance on the “Always College Football” podcast this week, Saban lamented the way realignment has stripped the tradition associated with playing in the same conference over a prolonged period of time.

… “But I think we’re going to deal with it in a greater capacity than ever before because I think megaconferences are probably here to stay,” Saban said. “Market share, there’s a lot of that involved in why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

Thanks, boss.  I hadn’t noticed until you brought it to my attention.

Meanwhile, Steve Spurrier tells us Clemson’s a good fit for the SEC because…

Clemson didn’t resemble an ACC football team throughout the 1980s – not to Steve Spurrier, who was a Duke assistant and later its coach during that decade. The Tigers won the ACC five times in the ’80s.

“When I coached at Duke, Clemson was actually like an SEC school in the ACC,” Spurrier said. “That was before FSU, Syracuse and Virginia Tech (joined the ACC). When you played Clemson, they looked like SEC guys.”

… “Their defensive guys were a little bit bigger, a little bit faster,” Spurrier said of Clemson’s ’80s teams. “They just lined up and tried to smash you. That was their style of offense.

“They certainly could slide right into the SEC.”

The point isn’t that these two have grown senile.  It’s that they’ve been listening to their own bullshit and having the media treat the banal as brilliance for so long, that it’s become the default position.

“I don’t know why (Fisher) is mad at Saban.”

I don’t know if Steve Spurrier misses the grind of coaching (I strongly doubt he misses the grind of recruiting, that’s for sure), but, judging from this, it sure sounds like he misses being in the mix as a SEC head coach.

Spurrier, famous for wise-cracking gamesmanship that often rattled and distracted opponents, seemed to side with Saban in what has become one of the most polarizing public exchanges in college football history.

“I don’t think Saban told any lies in there, so I don’t know what he was mad about,” said Spurrier, who is still the most recent SEC East Division coach to beat Saban in a regular-season game, back in 2010 while coaching South Carolina.

“Since (Fisher) beat him last year, I guess he can talk now,” Spurrier said, referring to Fisher becoming the first former Saban assistant to beat the legendary coach last season.

“He hasn’t beat much of anybody, but he beat Saban last year. But they haven’t won the division or anything since he’s been there.”

I mean, that’s about as close to saying “you can’t spell Citrus without UT” without mentioning Phil Fulmer as you can get.  Maybe Sankey ought to give him a fifteen-minute speaking slot at SEC Media Days for old times’ sake.

“There’s very little time to have a dead period.”

I don’t know if you saw this story yesterday about Matt Luke and his decision to step away from college football, but it’s an interesting read.  Georgia’s former o-line coach is presented as the canary in the coal mine with regard to the toll non-stop recruiting is taking on college coaches.

The entire recruiting calendar has accelerated exponentially compared to 15 years ago, says Kirby Smart, Luke’s former boss at Georgia. Prospects are deciding on their destinations earlier. When Smart and Luke were coming up as SEC assistants, prospects often made their decisions after official visits in December and January.

That timeline is now spring or summer before their senior season—something that resulted in officials creating the December early signing date and adding springtime official visits. These changes have only expanded and accelerated the recruiting calendar.

Smart sometimes feels like he spends more time recruiting potential players than he spends with his current players and his own family.

“Every coach, true to their heart, would say there should be more dead periods so they could (A) be with their families and (B) be with their team,” he says. “There’s 85 kids, including walk-ons, on campus that get neglected, too, because you’re spending so much time recruiting.”

Smart expects more coaches to go the way of Luke, particularly in the SEC, where he says TV contracts have sent salaries soaring, affording coaches the opportunity to step away. The 15-month pandemic recruiting dead period that ended last spring showed coaches what life without recruiting is like.

“The x-factor in this was COVID,” Smart says. “You can’t measure what COVID did to a coach’s mindset. There’s two types of people: (1) the ones who had too much [off time] and couldn’t wait to go back recruiting; or (2) the ones who loved it and asked, Why can’t I live a normal life like this?”

It reminds me of the observation someone made a couple of weeks ago about how the staffing model is changing to one of putting the younger assistants in the on-field roles and backing them with older coaches as analysts.

“Almost every person I talk to, it’s, I don’t know how people over 30 keep up with all this s—!” says Scott Roussel, president of FootballScoop.com, a site devoted to football coaching news. “The demands are constant. A lot of guys are getting burned out. There is a significant groundswell of people saying, There’s got to be a better life out there right now.”

The amusing part of this article is here:

Other head coaches are more laid-back. For instance, Steve Spurrier, the former Florida and South Carolina coach, notoriously spent much of his offseason golfing. The coaching profession, he says, has turned into coaches gloating not about their on-field success but their off-the-field grinding. “Coaches are saying, ‘Well, I work hard. Nobody is going to outwork me. Here to midnight every night!’” Spurrier says. “That’s the theme to go get a job is trying to convince the ADs and everybody how hard you work instead of ‘Hey, what’s your record?’”

Yeah, can anyone imagine the OBC succeeding in the current recruiting environment?  Actually, we don’t have to imagine that:  it was the story of his last few seasons at South Carolina.  That ended well.

“They’re due for the football gods to maybe smile on them this time…”

Jeez, when you’ve found Steve Spurrier…

“I believe Georgia is going to do something different with their defense. After they played the first time, they’re going to say, ‘We can’t sit in these zones, and we’ve got to get pressure on the quarterback somehow,’” said Spurrier, who coached in same-season rematch games five times as the coach at Florida or South Carolina, winning the second installment twice.

While coaches can make adjustments ahead of rematches, like Spurrier did with his swap to the shotgun, he said winning a sequel isn’t about rewriting strategy.

So, what type of team has the advantage in a rematch?

“The best team,” Spurrier said with a chuckle. “The best team has the advantage.”

I dunno.  Feels like a set up to me.

“The media didn’t get Dan Mullen fired. Dan Mullen got Dan Mullen fired.”

With an assist, according to Finebaum:

“This is just my theory and Steve [Spurrier] can shoot it down tomorrow. He’s welcome to. I think Spurrier was involved in this,” Finebaum said about Mullen’s firing on The ESPN College Football Podcast. “Scott Stricklin lives across the street from Steve Spurrier. Spurrier hangs out with Stricklin in the [press] box all the time, they’re close.

“The Spurrier wing of the party had had enough of Dan Mullen. They didn’t like his attitude, they didn’t like his quirkiness. They didn’t like the way he berated assistant coaches in front of others. And it rubbed them the wrong way. That much I can tell you. I’m not saying Steve Spurrier pulled the trigger but I sincerely doubt this decision was made without Steve Spurrier’s blessing.”

If the Evil Genius had a hand in canning our favorite Gator coach, that’s another reason to dislike him.  Also, WTF is “The Spurrier wing of the party”, anyway?

Incognito

Steve Spurrier at UGA-Florida wearing a Duke hat – a disguise, he claims, to maneuver through the tailgate scene around the stadium without incident.

🐐 🐐 pic.twitter.com/J5uJ8yBYbo

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) October 30, 2021

That’s one explanation, I suppose.

No mas

Crap on Mark Richt’s last five years in Athens if you must, but never forget he was a key contributor to this:

.@SteveSpurrierUF: "My last year, it wasn't being 70 years old, it was the losses. If (Nick Saban) loses three games in a season that's when he might think 'I don't wanna do this anymore'…but as long as they're recruiting well and winning, he could stay another 10 years."

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) October 27, 2021

That’s one thing he didn’t lose control over.  And for that, he has my eternal gratitude.

You know who I’d love to watch this year’s Cocktail Party with?

Steve Spurrier, when asked by @finebaum why Florida has struggled since the Alabama game: “Well, we don’t tackle very well.”

Miss that refreshing, yet simplistic honesty.

— Brandon Zimmerman (@BZSEC) October 27, 2021

Hell, I’d buy the beers to listen him rag on the Gators.

Fresh meat

Steve Spurrier welcomes one of the SEC’s newest members as only Steve Spurrier can.

Steve Spurrier on Texas jump to SEC: ‘They can’t win the Big 12 anyway.’ https://t.co/DoYG71MS8u

— Sentinel Sports (@orlandosports) July 29, 2021

Hey, Longhorns, the sooner you learn he’s a dick, the better.

Okay, that’s funny.

Score one for Shane Beamer at SEC Media Days.

Nailed it 😂 @GamecockFB pic.twitter.com/s0fEwUCxEn

— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) July 20, 2021

Let’s see if his sense of humor remains intact at season’s end.