The unanswered questions after Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher feud

The dust has begun to settle from a wild 24 hours in the SEC that saw three of college football’s biggest names -- Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher and Deion Sanders -- engaged in a public feud.

The mid-May mayhem began when Saban was asked about the current state of NIL during a question-and-answer session for a World Games event in Birmingham. With reporters from at least two of the state’s news outlets standing and several TV cameras from local stations set up along the side of the room, feet from the stage, Saban spoke to a crowd of more than a hundred local business leaders who were having dinner.

Saban and Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats were part of a panel that was supposed to also include Joe Namath on a video stream, but the former star Alabama and NFL quarterback was said to be having technical difficulties.

Saban hit on many previously-expressed points about NIL during his almost seven-minute answer, but broke new ground when he said Texas A&M “bought” its entire top-ranked 2022 recruiting class, contrasting it with Alabama’s second-ranked class that Saban said was not bought at all. Saban also brought up examples from Jackson State and Miami that he said he read in newspapers in order to make his point about the current state of college football.

The fallout was swift, with Jackson State coach Deion Sanders responding in several late-night tweets and, later, an interview with ESPN’s Andscape website. Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher took a more direct approach, calling a news conference in which he ripped into Saban for 10 minutes without ever using his name.

Saban followed up with a previously-scheduled radio interview Thursday afternoon and an interview with ESPN.com, apologizing for saying Texas A&M “bought” its class but otherwise standing by the rest of his answer about NIL.

That closed the first chapter of a saga that will inevitably continue -- almost certainly behind closed doors -- in the SEC’s spring meetings, which begin May 31 in Destin, and eventually on the field when Alabama and Texas A&M play in Bryant-Denny Stadium on Oct. 8.

In the meantime, several questions around the topic remain unanswered:

1. What will come of Jimbo Fisher’s vague accusations about Saban? The enraged Aggies coach lobbed insults at Saban during his news conference Thursday, calling Alabama’s coach a “narcissist” and saying he should have been slapped as a child, among other statements. But 10 times Fisher invited investigation into Saban’s past in a vague but accusatory way. The specific quotes:

  • “The parity in college football he’s been talking about? Go talk to coaches who coached for him. You’ll find out all the parity. Go dig into wherever he’s been. You can find out anything.”
  • “Some people think they’re God. Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find out about a guy a lot of things you don’t want to know. We build him up to be the czar of football. Go dig into his past or anybody that’s ever coached with him. You’ll find out anything you want to find out about what he does and how he does it. It’s despicable.”
  • “Just go ask all the people who work for him. They know exactly what he’s about.”
  • “He’s the greatest ever, huh? When you got all the advantages, it’s easy.”
  • “You coach with people like Bobby Bowden and learn how to do things. You coach with other people and learn how not to do things. There’s a reason I ain’t went back and work for him, with opportunities. Don’t want to be associated with it.”
  • “The operation and tactics of certain people who say them, and anybody who coach with him and know him, anybody out there in this business know him -- it’s amazing. Just go where he’s been.”
  • “I have nothing to hide. Our program has nothing to hide. It would be interesting if everybody could say that.”
  • “Talk about setting examples for players and creating value and all those good he has? You know what I mean? Live it. It’s amazing. Setting a hell of an example.”
  • “It’s disgusting to what we’re into right now. Especially by the people who are throwing the darts, who have no glass in their house.”
  • “The operation and the way things were done the other way, when the ‘parity’ was there? Like we said, there never has been parity. Certain people never followed the rules, anyway.”

After Fisher’s last statement, a follow-up question could not be heard on the microphone, but Fisher responded, smiling, “I didn’t say that. I just made a statement.” It was unclear if the question was asking if Fisher was making a direct accusation against Saban. Regardless, Fisher was publicly reprimanded by the SEC for violating the conference’s sportsmanship code that prevents coaches from making accusations. Saban was also reprimanded.

Fisher made a similarly-vague accusation in February during a rant ostensibly about Saban and Lane Kiffin, saying, “I know how some of those guys recruit, too. Go dig into that. I know the history, I know the tradition and I know things. Trust me, you don’t want to go down that avenue.”

Sanders also sent a warning to Saban in his response, telling Andscape, “They forget I know who’s been bringing the bag and dropping it off. I know this stuff. I’m not the one you want to play with when it comes to all of this stuff.”

The lingering question: do these threats turn into concrete accusations or investigations? Fisher said in his news conference that he does not back down from confrontation, but is he willing to escalate the situation and open Pandora’s box by providing direct evidence about what he claims was impropriety in Saban’s past?

Moreover, would any of Saban’s former assistants corroborate Fisher’s claims? Saban’s staff has churned in his 15 years at Alabama and dozens of his former staffers have taken jobs elsewhere, including at rival schools, without any turning in their old boss for what Fisher is suggesting happened.

2. Where does Alabama turn next in recruiting? As Saban pointed out Wednesday night, Alabama finished behind Texas A&M in 247 Sports’ recruiting rankings for 2022. That is not unprecedented in recent years -- the Tide finished second behind Georgia in 2020 and fifth in 2018 -- but 2023 is the first full recruiting cycle in which NIL has taken hold in college football. Alabama has three commitments to this point and ranks 36th in 247 Sports’ rankings.

Saban seemed to raise some level of alarm in his comments this week, suggesting Alabama might need to have more NIL involvement in recruiting after saying it has avoided it to this point. “We didn’t buy one player. Aight? But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future, because more and more people are doing it. It’s tough,” Saban said Wednesday night. He later added: “Now the recruiting, we have players in our state that grew up wanting to come to Alabama that they won’t commit to us unless we say we’re going to give them what somebody else is going to give them.”

Saban also stated Wednesday night, “I know that we’re going to lose recruits because somebody else is going to be willing to pay them more,” and added to ESPN in an Thursday interview, “If we go through this recruiting class this year and we lose all the players, because they’re making a hundred thousand dollars going someplace else, then what can you do?”

Saban seemed to be warning fans of a power shift in recruiting that could only be combatted if Alabama’s collective -- High Tide Traditions -- had the resources to compete with others. But even though Alabama enjoys a wide footprint of fans, some with deep pockets, there are likely more financial resources to be tapped in bigger markets. Texas A&M’s collective can draw from Houston and its corporate base, USC has the wealth of Los Angeles in its back yard and Miami’s collective is already associated with billionaire John Ruiz, as a few examples.

There is no way of knowing for sure how much money flows through any given collective in order to rank their purchasing powers, and that seems to be part of Saban’s angst. “There’s no professional league that has that circumstance because none of them are stupid enough to have it, and that’s what we have.” In the NFL, each team’s salary cap and spending under it can be monitored daily and publicly. College sports’ new world operates in the shadows, and there are signals that Alabama is not at the top of the list.

Said Oats on Wednesday night: “We’ve got some people that have been very supportive. We need to get more people that are going to support the whole concept of name, image and likeness.

“If we can have some people really get behind some of the athletes and some of the teams, and able to support them -- we’re going to have to, in order to stay up. That’s just the reality of it.”

3. Will any of this drive Saban out of the game? Saban is 70 and at least a decade older than other coaches of teams consistently competing for national championships. His age makes him an outlier at this point, with the odds of any season being his last increasing each year.

Saban earlier this offseason questioned why he would retire and has repeatedly said he would retire when he felt he was “riding the program down” instead of buoying it. He has also stated that the changes in college football are part of his daily challenges and “what keeps me going.”

But with Saban taking the stance of college football not having a “sustainable model,” it is worth wondering what Saban would do if the model does not change soon enough. Saban, Fisher and scores of other coaches and administrators have called for federal legislation to regulate NIL, but that process could be slow and changes to the game could be gradual over years.

Would Saban ever reach a breaking point where his frustration with the current environment overtakes his desire to continue coaching? He might not even know the answer to the question, but the reality remains that Saban will at some point retire. What we don’t know is when and the underlying reason, or mix of reasons, that will lead him to that decision.

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.

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