The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (55 page)

Room 240 of the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility at Alabama is home to the tight ends. Clean but cramped, the meeting room is outfitted with eleven
industrial chairs, a large video monitor at the front of the room and whiteboards along the side. It also happens to house the “office”—that is, two computers crammed onto a table stuck in a back corner—of twenty-two-year-old former Tide defensive back Wesley Neighbors.

In the fall of 2012, Neighbors was one of the youngest members on the largest and most expensive coaching staff in the country. For the 2011–12 season Alabama’s football expenses totaled $36.9 million, according to NCAA data, $3.5 million more than second-place Auburn ($33.3 million) and $10 million more than third-place Texas ($25.9 million). In addition to listing nine assistant coaches, the 2012 Alabama Football Directory included an NFL front-office-like roster of thirty-five other staff members, such as directors of strength and conditioning, player personnel, football operations, player development, performance nutrition, rehab services, video operations and creative media as well as the more typical tasks of academic program adviser and assistant equipment manager.

All of which reflected what Alabama had now become—the NFL’s thirty-third team.

On the staff page Neighbors was listed as a defensive analyst. His specialty was really breaking down special teams film and organizing day-to-day practice for the scout team. On the Tide coaching ladder he stood a rung or two above interns and student assistants. What made his job interesting to an outsider was his inside view of The Process at work.

“It goes top to bottom, but it also goes bottom to top,” said Neighbors before practice one day. “The top of the totem pole works on the big details. The farther you go down, the finer the details get. The smaller the details get. And I would work on the smaller, finer details. That’s kind of how I see my job.”

It was two in the afternoon. Neighbors was wearing an Alabama football T-shirt, gray shorts and a two-day growth on his face. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.

The fact was that Saban didn’t sleep all that much either, especially during the season. His mind, he said, was too busy dissecting the hours and days ahead. But you’d never know it from the look of him. Even up close, he bristled with the energy of a lightweight boxer training before a title fight, appearing nowhere near his actual age. What was powering his internal engine?

“No question,” said his longtime defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. “He’s driven to be the greatest coach in the game.”

His days began in earnest no later than 7:15 a.m. in a cavernous wood-paneled corner office decorated in warm earth tones. By the time he arrived, he would be well into his early-morning routine: up at 6:15, watching the Weather Channel until 6:40—not 6:45, 6:40. He would eat two Little Debbie cookies in three small bites each and drink his first two cups of coffee of the day. Between 12:00 and 1:00 almost every afternoon, from the middle of February until the first of June, Saban would play an intense game of four-on-four basketball with selected members of his staff. The rules never changed: three games to eleven; baskets counted one point, three-pointers one and a half points (Saban rules). The opposing squad had come to be known around the football office as the Washington Generals, a nod to the longtime designated patsies of the Harlem Globetrotters. “We don’t get too many calls,” said Jeff Purinton, associate athletics director for football communications, who regularly drew the duty of guarding Saban. The coach, true to form, was known to become rather, shall we say,
exercised
when a teammate failed to block out or call out a screen.

Afterward, lunchtime. The same meal every day: iceberg lettuce salad topped with turkey and cherry tomatoes. The usual dressing, light Dijon mustard on the side, which has been said by close observers to actually change from time to time.

In a world where little things could make a big difference, Saban’s microscopic approach to success stood alone. “He is very detail orientated,” said Smart, who had worked alongside Saban since 2006 and was a regular in the noon hoops games. “I mean, he wants every second of practice organized, every walk-through rep. He wants to plan for it. He wants it on paper, and he wants you to execute it.”

In the big picture Saban saw himself as the CEO of what he repeatedly referred to as “the organization.” His style was similar to that of a chief executive officer—polite but fast moving, his fifteen-hour days during the season meticulously organized to strip away what he liked to call “the clutter” in his life. To wit, with the click of a garage-door-like remote Saban could automatically close his office door, saving precious steps and time; his master calendar was plotted out at least eighteen months in advance; meetings with academic advisers and coaches all but eliminated small talk in favor of a quiet, direct “What do we got?”

“You function better when you’re in a routine. Most people do,” Saban said during an interview with
60 Minutes
in the fall of 2012. “Maybe it’s the obsessive-compulsive personality we all have to some degree, but I always function better in a routine. So when things go a certain way, I feel like I’m
going to be more productive because I know what’s going to happen next. I can stay more organized in my time management of doing things a certain way all the time and trying to duplicate that on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.”

But contrary to his intense, grind-it-out image, Saban always maintained a life away from football, particularly from about the middle of February until training camp opened the first week in August. His favorite methods of relaxation were golf (with practice, he played to about a 10 handicap), spending time on the water in his boat and reading. He was also not afraid to break out a deck of cards and challenge you to a hybrid game of gin.

Over the years Saban’s departure from the Miami Dolphins and hiring by Alabama in January 2007 have been the subject of more than a bit of mystery and outrage by die-hard Fins fans. How was former Alabama athletic director Mal Moore able to spirit Saban and his wife, Terry, out of South Florida and on a private plane to Tuscaloosa? Especially after Saban had repeatedly denied the rumors, going so far as to say on December 21, 2006, “I guess I have to say it: I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.”

And one might add: with good reason. At the time Alabama was in a sorry state. Mired near the bottom of the SEC pack, it was coming off five years of NCAA probation for recruiting violations. The Mike Shula era turned out to be long on hope and short on results, especially at the end.

It was late in the 2006 season, Shula’s fourth and final year, when Moore said he began contemplating another head coaching change. When he finally pulled the trigger on November 27, after a fifth consecutive loss to Auburn in the Iron Bowl, he made clear one of his top priorities was hiring a man who had won a championship.

“I couldn’t be trying anyone out,” he said.

Moore, who died from a lung condition in late March 2013 at the age of seventy-three, was one of those athletic directors cut from a different cloth. Tall and courtly, he came from a more genteel and less cutthroat time in college football. He was anything but a CEO for hire; cut Moore open and he would have bled crimson and white. His ’Bama bloodlines stretched back nearly fifty years. He had first walked on campus in 1958 as a scholarship quarterback on Bear Bryant’s first team. In the ensuing years Moore was part of ten national championships in football as a player, coach and athletic director. He returned to Alabama in 1990 as an offensive coordinator under Gene Stallings before moving into athletic administration
in 1994. By the time he took over as athletic director five years later, the Tide had turned, and his beloved program was living in its gilded past. “Their side of the campus used to be an eyesore, including Bryant-Denny Stadium,” said IMG’s Ben Sutton, a longtime friend of Moore’s.

During his tenure Moore turned Alabama into a shining star of the SEC, pumping more than $200 million into facilities improvements. His efforts helped produce conference championships in no fewer than eight sports, including baseball, women’s golf, softball and gymnastics. Yet Moore knew full well on which side his financial bread was buttered; more than ever, he needed a rock star football coach, someone capable of winning games and reenergizing the fan and donor base.

In Moore’s mind he had three candidates to replace Shula: South Carolina’s coach Steve Spurrier, West Virginia’s red-hot Rich Rodriguez and … Saban.

Moore said he first offered Spurrier the head job in December 2006 when they were both in New York City for a Hall of Fame dinner. “It was intriguing, that’s the word he used, ‘intriguing,’ ” Moore recalled. “But he said, ‘Mal, I’m just too dug in at South Carolina.’ ”

But Spurrier had another candidate in mind. “He told me, ‘You should go hard for Saban,’ ” said Moore.

Moore found this ironic. A few months earlier, midway through a second season with the Dolphins, Saban had sent word through Jimmy Sexton, his powerful agent, he was leaning toward leaving the NFL. Saban’s first year of marriage in Miami had ended on a happy note: the Dolphins had reeled off six straight wins to finish the season 9-7. But his second year had dissolved into a difficult grind—a 1-6 start precipitated by problems at quarterback and players grumbling about the intensity of practice and what they saw as Saban’s dictatorial style of coaching. Actually, the Sabans weren’t all that happy either. Both Nick and Terry discovered they missed campus life and the spirit of the college game. Saban told a friend in Miami he felt as if he were going to work at a factory every day; he missed the camaraderie of college coaching and realized he felt much more comfortable building young men than fighting the habits of professional athletes.

So Moore set about trying to convince Saban to make Tuscaloosa his new home. He told Sexton, with whom he often spoke, he was prepared to make his client the highest-paid coach in the Southeastern Conference. “Well, you can stop right there,” Moore said Sexton told him. “We need to be talking about the country, not the conference.”

Moore made it clear he “absolutely never spoke with” Saban during
the 2006 NFL season as he knew the coach was committed to focusing on the Dolphins. But that didn’t stop Moore from working on a deal sheet with Sexton. They laid out a prospective salary, bonuses, access to private airplanes and all the rest. Then Sexton suddenly stopped returning his calls. So Moore shifted to Plan B and heated up conversations with Rodriguez, who had expressed a strong interest in the job. Talk to my agent, said Rodriguez. Again, another deal sheet was constructed. Then Sexton called back. Moore told him he was about to hire Rodriguez. It was the last thing Sexton wanted to hear. The NFL season still had a month to go; Saban needed more time. Time Moore frankly didn’t have. Alabama’s president, Dr. Robert E. Witt, had been quietly urging Moore to make a choice.

So on Thursday, December 7, 2006, Moore made one: He reached an agreement with Rodriguez, a rising star with back-to-back Big East titles under his belt. The reported offer was $12 million over six years, $700,000 a year more than his pay at West Virginia.

As Moore told it, he and Rodriguez sealed the deal with what Moore called a “blood oath” not to utter a word of what had transpired. By mid-afternoon on December 7 the paperwork had made its way to the Alabama administrative building for vetting by university lawyers. Then, said Moore, within two hours, around 5:00 p.m., news broke on ESPN that Alabama had reached an agreement to hire Rodriguez. Moore was anything but pleased with that piece of news.

The next day Rodriguez publicly denied any agreement had been reached, saying he had declined an offer. “This is my school, my alma mater, my dream,” he said of West Virginia.

In Moore’s mind it didn’t matter what Rodriguez said. He knew. An oath had been broken.

“I never spoke to Rodriguez again,” he said.

The clock continued to tick. Alabama was set to play in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana, on December 28. Miami’s season ended three days later with a loss in Indianapolis to drop the Dolphins’ final record to 6-10. Moore made his move. Instead of flying home with the team after the bowl game, he drove to Tuscaloosa to avoid the press and hopped on a friend’s Gulfstream for a one-way recruiting mission to South Florida.