The Great Coaching Search of 2006

I was out of town working in Chattanooga. I wanted Saban over anyone alive. I was devastated when he was saying he would not be our head coach. I still had a sliver of hope because I knew the Dolphins future was very bleak. They didn't have any good young players and no QB. The coaching search was tough to swallow when working with all the UT and UGA fans. No one seemed to be chomping at the bit to be our coach. All the dark years and numerous coaching changes had taken their toll. However, coach Moore had done a great job improving facilities around campus and I knew the fan base was hungry. We had to go crazy with the $ but we got the guy that I wanted. It was fun to go to work and see the fear in the UT fans' eyes.

I was extremely opposed to the Rich Rod idea he never impressed me at WVU and their fanbase didn't have the best things to say about him and he was a hometown guy, I wondered why the great Mal Moore even gave him the time of day. But you guys should've seen my aubie friends faces when coach Saban got off the plane, it was a Kodak moment.

That was back when I had an inside source within the athletic department. Mal wanted Saban from day one, and had the backing of a majority of the BOT. Saban's continual denials cooled a few of the power brokers, and they began pushing for Rich Rodriguez. Rich agreed in principle, and his lawyer was actually in the athletic department offices the day after it was announced. But Rich never called back and eventually turned us down. That gave Mal all the power he needed to hold firm until after the NFL season was over. He didn't know if he would be able to get him when he boarded the plane to Miami and there were a lot of nervous folks as they really had no Plan B at that point.

My family had season tickets throught the fran/shula years. Quietly my parents were having some money trouble and we couldn't renew in '06 during what became shula's last year.
My dad felt horrible about it, and he made sure we had tickets to the Mississipi State game so we could at least watch one together.
What a kick in the nuts game to go to. It sucked. I was despondent at the idea that UA football was broken and wouldn't get fixed.

Through gritted teeth Dad was able to talk his way into bowl tickets and we went to shreveport. The whole way we bounced ideas back and forth on who Bama was looking at. We wanted Saban, and we had heard the rumor that he was looking around.

Sat at the pregame and talked with an older lsu couple who were nice and wanted bama to beat OSU. We asked them about Saban before heading to the turnstyles and they said "oh forget it, he ain't never going to Bama". Their tone was somewhat angry.

After the game I saw a few frats talking loud about 'getting saban' and 'we gonna get saban and turn this shite around'. I couldn't help but laugh.

For the next week or two post game I tried to ignore the sports news until a coach was hired. It took forever. Finally, on the last day before school starting back I turned on ESPN and heard that an important story was developing in miami. I couldn't believe it. Just assumed it was saban saying he had a new Miami contract.

I was stunned, and on that day I knew Bama football had changed. I wish I still had my pdf's of the vile, hateful articles from espn and a few others about how "Saban is too good for Bama" and "how desperate is Bama? Because they aren't what they used to be" tripe.

I'll never forget that season and aftermath.

I would also want to read the books of the people involved, Saban, Sexton, UA Staffers, everyone's. I heard it is an interesting story.

I'll leave this here:

Saban only lied when his lips were moving - Pat Forde, ESPN - January 4, 2007

i remember living in t-town and getting that paper that said RichRod had agreed to terms. At that time i was thinking, well that's better than Shula...

I called him and told him to quit playing hardball, get on the plane with Mal and the rest is history.