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Playing the Excuse Game: Nick Saban Would Be Irrelevant Without a Lucky Win Over Tennessee

By Caleb Calhoun

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Alabama Crimson Tide Head Coach Nick Saban made more excuses Wednesday, so let’s play his game. He would be worthless without one lucky win over Tennessee.

Believe it or not, last year, Nick Saban had a point when talking about his team’s lack of interest in being in the Sugar Bowl against the Oklahoma Sooners.

But his excuse Wednesday at SEC Media Days, that his team was facing NFL distractions, joins the list of laughable excuses he has made for losing in the past. As if other title contenders don’t have NFL distractions.

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But fair is fair, so let’s join Saban in playing the excuse game. We are going to go back to 2001. Saban was coming off his second decent season with mostly Gerry DiNardo players and backed into the SEC Championship game because the SEC West was so bad.

His LSU Tigers met the No. 2 Tennessee Vols, who were much better and thinking about a national championship. But, in a stroke of great fortune for Saban, his starting quarterback Rohan Davey went down and was replaced by Matt Mauck. The Vols had prepared for Davey the pocket passer, so when Mauck came in, they had a really hard time adjusting.

LSU won that game 31-20, but note that while Davey played most of the first half, the Tigers did not score a point with him in the game. Davey’s injury was extremely lucky for Saban.

That game is what elevated his status as a head coach and allowed him to bring in a Top 15 recruiting class in 2002, then the No. 1 recruiting class in 2003. Without the game, he likely would have been just a solid coach at LSU who never elevated his profile with a national title.

At which point he never would have gone to the NFL or back to Alabama where he could recruit by just selling his name.

So yes, every bit of Saban’s relevancy on the college football world comes down to that lucky game.

See Nicky? We can play the excuse game as well. Your career is all built off of a lucky 2001 SEC Championship win.

But let’s even go further than that.

Saban’s career would have been over before it started were it not for a lucky win in 1998. At that point, he was on the hot seat and his record was barely above .500. It finished 6-6 in 1998, but he had one lucky victory that saved his job: a 28-24 win over the No. 1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, their only loss of the year, which kept them out of the national title.

Ironically, Tennessee won the title that year. But back to the point, Saban won that game off of a lucky 4th and 1 stop against the Buckeyes late in the game. It was just a random upset that saved Saban’s job, and the next year with the school he built his profile up by going 9-2.

This is why it is annoying to hear Saban make excuses. His career was made off of two lucky games. But that’s part of football, just like dealing with distractions are. So if Saban deserves credit for his success, and he does, regardless of the luck it took to get there, then we can’t nullify his failures with lame excuses.

And getting back to his most recent excuse, as a head coach, he should be the one who can get his players to tune out those NFL distractions. For him not to take the blame shows just how entitled he has become.

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