There are many perks to being the head football coach at Alabama. One of them is having your $3.1 million mortgage paid off for you, with some of the funds coming from people you don’t even know.
According to Kent Faulk of AL.com, the Crimson Tide Foundation paid off Saban’s home in March 2013 — 10 weeks after the coach won his third national championship at Alabama. The home was purchased by Saban and his wife Terry in 2007. It now technically belongs to the foundation, but the Sabans are still living there.
Scott Phelps, the assistant secretary of the Crimson Tide Foundation, noted that the University of Alabama owned both homes legendary coach Bear Bryant lived in while he was coaching the Tide.
“It’s not all that unusual in the world for universities to provide the housing,” Phelps said. “We want to keep (Saban) happy. We think he is the best coach in America.”
The Crimson Tide Foundation is a nonprofit group that was founded in 2003. Its purpose is to raise private funds to provide “necessary resources to achieve success.” Making sure the team’s head coach is as happy as possible and doesn’t want to leave to take a job at, say, a place like Texas certainly falls under the foundation’s mission statement.
The NCAA confirmed to AL.com that a coach’s compensation package is between the coach and the university and that funds can come from a university foundation.
H/T ESPN
