re: The Great Coaching Search of 2006

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.