How did Fisher, Saban fall out?
Ex-pals will soon cross paths again with drama in air at spring meetings
COLLEGE STATION — Mythical good ol’ boys Bo and Luke of fictional Hazzard County in SEC country have nothing on the ’Bo and Nick Show in terms of entertainment — a sudden soap opera prompting a quite real hazard leading to next week’s SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla.
In happier times between Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban, Fisher waited outside Alabama’s locker room to congratulate Saban on yet another national title with the Crimson Tide in January 2018.
If Fisher is to be believed now, he already was filled with angst and anger toward Saban that night a little more than four years ago, and had been for more than a decade.
“You coach with people like Bobby Bowden and learn how to do things,” Fisher said during his infamous tirade directed at Saban last week. “You coach with other people and learn how not do things. There’s a reason … I didn’t go back and work for him. … You don’t want to be associated with him.”
When did it go haywire between one of the two most iconic college football coaches in history and … a fellow West Virginian in Fisher? Based on what Fisher said in his 10-minute bombast during a hastily planned news conference on Thursday, the acrimony dates to their time together at LSU from 2000-04.
An SEC insider said Saban was still taken aback by Fisher’s surprising blast, even after Saban had told a group of business leaders in Alabama on Wednesday that “A&M bought every player on their team,” as captured on video by AL.com.
Saban never said A&M cheated — just that the Aggies had aggressively used the new setup that players can now benefit from name, image and likeness (NIL), perhaps based on promises to members of the class of 2022 (Saban never got that detailed). Saban later apologized via ESPNU Radio in saying he should have never singled out a program when discussing NIL.
The past week, too, has provided young and timeworn reporters alike a valuable lesson: Never believe coaches when they praise peers. And with some coaches, too, the sentence could have ended here: Never believe coaches.
Saban, who’s won six national titles at Alabama after winning one with Fisher at LSU in 2003, once used the critical word “bought” in another manner in describing his former offensive coordinator at LSU.
“He was a guy who always bought in to exactly how we had to do things to help develop our team,” Saban said of Fisher in 2018. “Whether it was personnel decisions that we had to make to move guys
from one side of the ball to the other, or how we had to install things so that one side could catch up to the other.”
In December 1999, Saban exited Michigan State for LSU, and one of his first calls was to a budding offensive coordinator at the University of Cincinnati. Fisher happily accepted, and he and his young family packed their bags for Baton Rouge, La., where they’d spend the next five seasons together in the SEC.
“We thought very similar, and I don’t mean to piggyback,” Fisher said in 2018 about his time spent with Saban. “We saw the game very similarly. There are nuances, but meaning what you had to do to be successful.”
That same game week nearly four years ago Saban
said of Fisher, “I had a great working relationship with Jimbo. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He did a fantastic job at Florida State — he won a national championship there (in 2013) — and he’ll do a really good job at Texas A&M.”
Saban is 3-1 against Fisher with the latter at A&M, but the Aggies won the most recent battle 41-38 last October at Kyle Field. A&M and Alabama are scheduled to play on Oct. 8 in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
These tempestuous days Fisher, 56, has labeled Saban, 70, a “narcissist” who believes he’s God, a stunning revelation from a former Saban assistant who up until last week had only praised Saban publicly.
“One of the best things (Saban) did as a coach was never let you get divided offensively and defensively,” Fisher once recalled of his former boss. “That was the greatest thing about those LSU teams, even though there were battles during practices and the pride of winning the day.”
Fisher ran the offense during those ongoing collisions in practices, while Saban’s passion and expertise always has been defense.
“They would have a (defensive) scheme one day and we would say, ‘Man, we can’t protect against that,’ ” Fisher continued. “Or we would run a certain route and he’d say, ‘Man, how are we going to cover that?’ We had the intercompetitive battles, but we were always on the same page.
“Everything we did was to make the other guy better and prepare him for a game.”
Fisher said Saban emphasized team unity during their time together in Baton Rouge.
“I had seen it before elsewhere – offenses and defenses getting divided,” Fisher recalled. “They’d say, ‘All right, I’m going to my side and you go to yours.’ But with Nick it was, ‘How do we win this game?’ ”
A sign that Fisher didn’t care to be considered one of Saban’s most recognizable protégés occurred a couple of years ago when Fisher corrected a reporter who said Fisher had called high rankings and upbeat news stories patting his players on the back “rat poison.”
Fisher sternly said he didn’t say “rat poison,” only “poison.” Rat poison was Saban’s manner of describing media positivity toward his program, in perhaps weakening his players into believing the accolades as a season pressed on.
Fisher’s correction at the time was simply considered the younger coach trying to carve his own maxims in the business — and not be confused with his mentor. Now? In perhaps the oddest moment among a string of oddities, Fisher said Saban perhaps deserved a slapping when he was a child.
“You can call me anything you want to call me, you ain’t calling me a cheat,” Fisher said. “I don’t cheat and I don’t lie. I learned that when I was a kid, and if you did your old man slapped you ’side the head.
“Maybe somebody should have slapped him.”
The ex-pals will see each other at next week’s SEC spring meetings, which start the day after Memorial Day, when coaches are known to get issues off their chests behind closed doors.
“We’re done,” Fisher said of his longtime friendship with Saban. “He shows you who he is. He’s the greatest ever, huh? When you have all the advantages, it’s easy.”
Nothing, however, likely will be easy next week for SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, in trying to keep things civil between the coaches — and avoid any hazards in Okaloosa County.