Bill Simmons lit up Nick Saban on Friday with the hottest of hot takes that is sure to rile up fans in Alabama.
On Episode 160 of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” which was released Friday, Simmons went hard after Saban, calling the Crimson Tide coach a “coward.”
Let’s be clear: Simmons didn’t appear to set out to destroy Saban, but he casually torched the Crimson Tide head coach while discussing a pick for the National Championship Game.
“He’s a coward, he left the NFL,” said Simmons, via SEC Country. “He’s a coward. You (should) want to compete against the best. The best coaches aren’t in college football; they’re in professional football. And he had a chance to go head-to-head against Bill Belichick, the greatest coach of all-time, he didn’t get the quarterback he wanted in Miami, and like a coward he went back to college, where he stays, where he can just beat up on all these inferior college coaches. Congratulations. He’s the guy who plays Madden on rookie level winning the Super Bowl.
“Come to the NFL, let’s see how good of a coach you are, Nick Saban. When he plays golf does he play from the pink tees? Come to the NFL, let’s see how good you are.
“‘Oh I didn’t get Drew Brees in Miami, I gotta go back to college. I’m just gonna cherry pick all the best high school players on the planet because I’m the head coach at Alabama,’ Simmons said, mocking Saban.
Though humorous and certain to generate plenty of backlash, Simmons’ comments are completely misguided and could not possibly devalue Saban’s accomplishments and the difficulties of his achievements any more.
The list of greatest college football coaches all time is pretty short. You’re talking Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Tom Osborne, and maybe a few others. If his team wins on Monday, Saban probably slides into the top spot as best college coach ever.
The guy has built a complete dynasty at Alabama and continues to win despite there being other tough coaches in college such as Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh. His consistency — he has won at least 10 games a season since his second year in the job — is second to none. Except for his first season on the job, he has never finished a season ranked lower than 10th. And he continues to win despite shuffling recruits in and out, which is not easy. He could have kicked back and rested, feeling satisfied with his three national titles in four years, but he didn’t. Instead, he continued to compete with the same fire as when he started the job, and he’s climbed back to holding the dominant spot in college football.
If it were so easy to build the kind of dynasty Saban has, why have so few been able to do anything close to that in the history of the game? And if winning in college football were as easy as Simmons is making it sound, then why do so many successful coaches get fired so easily? Les Miles, Mark Richt, Phil Fulmer and Gene Chizik are among the SEC rival coaches who have had tremendous success but got canned largely because they couldn’t keep up with Saban.
And you can totally forget the notion that Saban was an outright failure in the NFL. The man went 9-7 with Gus freaking Frerotte as his quarterback in Miami, finishing his first season on a six-game winning streak. The next season he may have gone 6-10, but when you consider that he went 5-6 with Joey Harrington as his quarterback, I’d say that’s pretty impressive; Harrington was 21-44 otherwise. Saban and the Dolphins may have picked wrong going with Daunte Culpepper over Drew Brees, leading the coach to go back to the college game, but that doesn’t defeat his accomplishments. He knew college was the best place for him and made the right choice.
This is just one opinion, but if Saban were to go to a franchise of his choosing in the NFL, he’d easily be one of the top coaches in the league, just like Pete Carroll. He doesn’t have to leave behind the incredible legacy he’s building at Alabama just to prove it to a talker like Simmons.
