Remember those wild-ass Nick Saban-to-Texas rumors in 2013? Welp, it turns out those were an actual thing.
From Monte Burke of NewYorkTimes.com:
Before the call, [private equity mogul/Texas regent] Tom Hicks told Hall that Sexton might just be playing Texas to squeeze more money out of Alabama. Hall replied that he doubted that was the case; he pointed out that his friend was friends with Sexton, and he said Sexton wouldn’t want to antagonize him. “I had called my friend,” Hall says, “and asked him if he thought he was being played. He said, ‘No.’ ”
Hall and Tom Hicks talked to Sexton for 45 minutes. They say that Sexton told them that Saban felt “special pressure” and a lack of appreciation at Alabama. “Sexton said that the day after the championship, Alabama boosters were pounding the table, talking about a three-peat,” Hall says.
Sexton also told the men that Saban felt as if he was more of a turnaround artist than a long-term C.E.O., and that it was easier and more fun to rebuild a program than it was to keep one at the top. Saban’s wife, Terry, liked warm weather, so they wanted to stay in the South. Saban also loved lakes, something the Austin area has in abundance. Sexton floated the idea that Saban could take the Texas job, his last; bring the football program back to national prominence; and then retire.
Saban, of course, didn't end up at Texas. But Hicks said it totally would've went down if but for one thing:
Two days after the call with Sexton, Hicks had lunch with Brown. “I was trying to give him some personal advice,” he says. “I told him he should think about retiring and going out on top and becoming a TV star like he is now. But he didn’t support the idea at all. He didn’t want to retire.”
The whole piece is an interesting insight into the high-stakes, backroom world of college football that fans rarely get to see.
This, coupled with teary-eyed Saban almost reneging on LSU in 1999, paints Saban as an insecure little man. Who knew?
