The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (56 page)

Upon landing, he reached Saban by phone. Terry joined them on the call.

The former Terry Constable had first met her husband in middle school science camp; she was in seventh grade at one middle school on the uptown side of the tracks and he was in eighth near the other side. As Saban liked to tell it—with one of his wry smiles—the woman affectionately known around Alabama as Ms. Terry “didn’t know what a first down was when we first started dating, and there’s no doubt in my mind she thinks she should be the head coach at Alabama right now. No doubt. And she is a hell of an assistant, even though she thinks she’s the head coach, which, when she’s around, I always make her think that.”

But in many ways Terry Saban was the head coach—certainly of access to their home and her husband’s off-field charity work. She was also the unquestioned force behind the Sabans’ commitment to charity, particularly Nick’s Kids Fund, which had distributed some $2.5 million to more than seventy-five Alabama charities. Said Saban, “I would say she’s probably as big a part of the program as anyone in terms of her time, her commitment and all the things she does to serve the people in a very positive way that is helpful for us to be successful, not only in football, but in the community and what we can do to serve other people.”

Moore spoke with husband and wife for about thirty minutes. Saban was struggling, clearly caught up in the persuasive powers of Dolphins’ billionaire owner Wayne Huizenga whose business empire contained Waste Management, Blockbuster Video and AutoNation. “Nick told me he [Huizenga] knows how to close a deal,” recalled Moore. “He said, ‘I tell him I want out, and he talks me back in.’ ” But the call ended on an upbeat note. Saban told Moore he would call him the next day at noon.

Noon came and went. Ninety more minutes passed. Still no call. Moore checked out of his hotel and readied to return to Tuscaloosa. He called Sexton one last time.

“Hang in there,” said the agent.

So Moore hung. He checked into another hotel closer to Saban’s home, just in case. Saban called back. He told Moore to meet him at his home that night. He gave Moore the pass code to get inside the gated community.

That night, just as Moore was pulling in front of Saban’s house, his phone rang. It was Paul Bryant Jr., Bear’s only son and a member of the Alabama Board of Trustees.

“How you doing?” asked Bryant.

“I’m right out front of Saban’s house,” Moore whispered.

Nobody had to tell Bryant about the timing of his call. “I’m just afraid
you were going to have a heart attack,” he told Moore before hopping off the phone.

Once Moore was inside the house, he and Terry talked. Terry brought Moore coffee. They had never met. The conversation ranged from Huizenga to her husband’s frustration with his job. Then the phone rang. It was Saban, still struggling over what to do.

“I called Terry and I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to talk to him [Mal] tonight,’ ” he said. “She said, ‘Oh, Mal’s already here. We’ve been talking for an hour.’ That was the first step in the right direction.”

The next big step came when Saban finally arrived at home.

“If I made a pitch, it began with the way I see it you don’t have a choice but to come to Alabama,” said Moore. “If you get beat with the Dolphins, they’re going to blame you. And if you don’t and we win at Alabama, you’re going to wish you were at Alabama.”

Saban excused himself and went to another room to make a call. At that point, Moore recalled, Terry Saban grabbed his right arm and shook it hard with both hands. “We’ve got to get him on that plane!” she said.

Moore let out a big laugh. “I knew right then I was in a helluva lot better shape than I thought I was,” he said.

Saban returned to say he had a meeting the next morning with Huizenga. He wanted Moore to return to the gated community and wait down the street for a call. The next morning Moore found himself waiting under an oak tree as television trucks gathered just outside the gate and helicopters circled the sky above.

Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. his phone rang. It was Saban. We’re coming with you, the coach said. Give me until two o’clock.

Saban later said he never directly told Huizenga he was leaving, but Huizenga finally said, “Nick, if that’s what you want, I want you to do it.”

Moore headed back to his hotel to pack. The television trucks stayed put. The helicopters circled. By 2:00 p.m. he was back under the old oak tree. His phone rang once more. Moore told Saban they needed to get moving. Did he want to take two cars? No, said Saban. Back your car into our garage; the luggage is ready.

So that’s what Moore’s driver did, only to find the Sabans, their daughter and one of her friends waiting. Somehow the driver stuffed the luggage into the trunk, the Sabans and friend piling into the back. Off they went. Reporters followed. Helicopters chased. On the way to the airport Moore made two calls, one to the owner of the Gulfstream, the other to a name synonymous with Alabama football. He handed the phone to Saban.

“Congratulations, Coach,” said Joe Willie Namath.

Half a dozen camera crews were waiting when Moore’s car pulled up to the private plane entrance at Fort Lauderdale Airport. As the Sabans scrambled inside the jet, Moore reached into his pocket and pulled out a few hundred dollars. He handed them to his driver, his lone companion for three frantic days. By accident a $10 bill fluttered away. One of the airport workers picked it up and handed it back to Moore, shaking his hand.

“Great job, Coach Moore,” he said. “I’m from Anniston, Alabama!”

Seven years later Moore let out another long laugh at the pure pleasure he derived from the oddity of that moment.

“I really could have hugged that man’s neck,” he said.

Inside the plane Moore popped his head into the cockpit. The pilot of the plane was the brother-in-law of Richard Todd, a former Crimson Tide quarterback. Welcome to the small world of the SEC.

Then Moore uttered a line that should live forever in Alabama football lore.

“I told him if I didn’t come back on this plane with Nick Saban, he might as well have flown my ass straight to Cuba!!”

But there he was, one of the brightest minds in the game, sitting with his back to the cockpit. As the wheels rolled up, Moore said his new coach eased back in his chair and closed his eyes, finally allowing his emotions to unwind.

“Well, Mal,” said Saban after he opened his eyes. “I guess you think I’m a helluva coach.”

Yes, Moore said. Certainly. You’re an outstanding coach.

Saban looked Moore straight in the eye. “You need to understand one thing,” he said. “I’m not worth a damn without players.”

“Thank God you understand
that
,” thought Moore.

In a tribute to Moore shortly after he passed away, Saban told
ADAY
, the official game-day program of Alabama football, that his happiest moment with his friend came when Moore was honored as the nation’s top athletic director in 2012.

Saban said Moore had tears in his eyes when he told Saban he had changed Moore’s life by accepting the Alabama job.

“No, Mal, you changed my life,” Saban said. “I’m a better coach. I’m a better person. I’m a better teacher for the lessons I’ve learned in partnership with you.”

T
he discussion around significant injuries in football hit a fever pitch during the 2012 season. The pressure to improve player safety reached a new level when President Obama weighed in.

“I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football,” Obama said in a January 2013 interview with the
New Republic
. “And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”

This time, the conversation wasn’t strictly about the NFL and the well-documented cases on long-term injuries and concussions. Instead, the president made it clear that college football players may well have the most to lose.

“I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they’re grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies,” Obama said. “You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about.”

The president’s concerns were supported just two months later. A March 2013 study from researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that college football players are likely to experience significant and long-term brain damage from hits to the head even when they do not suffer a concussion.
Blood samples, brain scans and cognitive tests were given to sixty-seven college football players before and after games during the 2011 season. The forty players thought to have absorbed the most serious hits showed spiked levels of an antibody that has been linked to long-term brain damage. The study, which was published in
PLOS ONE
, came after the NCAA had provided a $400,000 grant to the National Sport Concussion Outcomes Study Consortium.

But in some cases, the BCS still controlled when and where the message about head injuries could be released. Prior to the 2013 BCS championship game, Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, attempted to hold a news conference to talk about head injuries, but the Marriott, where the press conference was scheduled, caved under pressure from the BCS, according to the
Birmingham News
.

“The contracts were all ready to have a room [
sic
], but before they executed the contract, they checked with the BCS and Marriott pulled the plug,” Huma told the
News
in January 2013. “We needed to inject the conversation of the health of these football players. The BCS has tried to actively silence us on this. That was pretty disturbing.”

Significant injuries are nothing new to college football, but the aftermath and long-term effects continue to be felt long after players take their last snaps. During the course of the 2012 season, the authors and researchers for this book sent out individual surveys to 283 living starters from thirteen BCS title-winning teams between 1998 and 2011. Of the 283 living starters from those teams, 34, or 12 percent, responded to our inquiries. The players were interviewed about significant injuries they suffered during their college playing days and whether they continue to suffer from them. They were also asked if they graduated from college, how many hours per week were dedicated to football-related activities, and whether they were influenced to choose a major.

Of the thirty-four players interviewed for this book, nineteen (56 percent) said they suffered a debilitating injury of some sort as a result of their college football playing days. They described a wide array of injuries that continued to affect them to this day. For example: