Nick Saban walked out on the Miami Dolphins today, two years after walking away from LSU to fulfill his dream of being a NFL head coach. The reports are that he will be the highest paid coach in the NCAA with the Tide throwing a 10-year, $40 million contract at his feet which apparantly trumps the three years and $13.5 milllion that the Dolphins would have ponied up over the remainder of his contract. That's a pretty stark turnaround from his comments of December 21st,
"I'm not going to be the Alabama coach."
According to Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports, Saban told Dolphin owner Wayne Huizenga three times that he wanted to leave Miami for Tuscaloosa and each time the owner tried to convince him to stay and finish the job. They met again this morning and Huizenga understood that Saban's desire was to move on from South Florida and agreed to let him walk away from the deal.
I guess Saban found it harder to recruit in the NFL than he did in college seeing as how he went out and brought in two quarterbacks to compete for the starting job but ended up playing out the string with someone named Cleo Lemon under center. Like Larry Brown's realization that there was no way to save the Knicks I think Saban realized that the Dolphin turnaround was not coming soon (15-17 over his two seasons) and that with the NFL being so parity-driven he could find himself 40-40 after five years with no progress toward a Super Bowl. And like Brown he's proven to be a better coach than personnel manager as it was Saban who chose Daunte Culpepper's knee over Drew Brees's shoulder as the body part most likely to rebound in 2006. And like Brown it's hard to figure on Saban getting another professional job too soon after burning through job after job with little in the way of loyalty or professionalism.
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