And it wouldn’t be a big deal. Want to know why? Because as The Feed points out, Nick Saban still hasn’t signed a contract yet! I’m not sure if this is a common practice or not (definitely not if you’re doing good business), but an attorney in the area says it’s not a huge matter:
“What it gets down to is, once you have the principle terms nailed down – salary, perks, assistant coaches’ salaries – the coach accepts the position based on that,” said Birmingham attorney Russ Campbell, who represents college and NFL coaches, including the Atlanta Falcons’ Bob Petrino.
“Once that happens, sometimes a coach signs a letter of intent, sometimes it’s just a handshake. But the coach’s camp gets comfortable. They say, `We’ve got our agreement.’ The rest of it is really items put in place to protect the university.”
This is not the first time a coach hadn’t signed a contract with Alabama after agreeing to coach the football team. They ousted Mike Price without reservations after the strip club adventure, even though he had been coach for four months. All because Price hadn’t yet signed a contract. The same whack practice came back to bite them in the butt when Dennis Franchione bounced to Texas A&M because he never signed what was believed to be a ten year deal. So like I said, Nick Saban could leave tomorrow without breaking a written deal (which for him isn’t terribly unlikely), and there would be 92,000+ Alabama fans crying for weeks.
