(HT: Kleph.)

We thought Alabama fans might be short on spank material in the offseason, so there you are: footage of Nick Saban catching fish in the scenic environs of Lake Burton should be enough to get your worm burping fast enough, Tide fans. You’re welcome. Given the awesome Tide-themed rawk booming behind it, you might be able to get a double-barreled combat jack out of the experience if you’re properly motivated and are turned on by the sight of your coach wearing the goofy mesh safari hat. (And don’t lie: You are.)

Saban can’t fish with the deadly killing precision he normally would use, both because he is presently coaching like the obsessed rural Ahab he is, and because he’s hurt his middle finger and wearing a splint on it. No, you can’t suck on it to try to “heal” him–medical professionals are on the case, and that is creepy in the first place. Saban injured the finger not communicating with the media or his offensive line, but instead in a lunchtime basketball session where Saban is usually defended by the worst defender in the lunch league, who is of course the media guy.

Flex a royal we, Coach Process!

“We were W.I.A.,” Saban said, trying not to smile. “Know what that is? Wounded in action, when we were playing. But we didn’t miss a play. We didn’t miss a beat. Nobody ever knew I got hurt. We were relentless in the way we competed, ai’ight.”

Wait to play through pain and joke about whoever injured your finger in the game. Saban was too polite to mention exactly who harmed the $4 million digit, probably both because he feared Alabama fans attempting to pick off the poor bastard with high-powered hunting rifles from a distance, and also because he’s planning to have him crushed by a falling building later this week for his insolence.

You’ll have to wait for fresh Alabama cheesecake, but not for long: the Terrence Cody Swimsuit calendar should be along any week now, provided our Fujianese chemists get the alluring bacon smell to stick to the paper like we want it to be, right?

Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A television studio. A single chair sits off-center on a carpeted platform. The offseason edition of the Nick Saban Show is set to begin, but in the spot where co-host Tom Roberts usually sits instead holds a flat screen television.

Enter COACH NICK SABAN.

Coach Saban: Christ, I think I ate some bad sausage. Tell those people on the Gulf they cook like old people jump.

Personal Assistant Nancy: Yes, sir. Now, if you’ll please have a seat, sir. You only have to do three of these in the offseason.

Coach Saban: Right, right. Christ, it feels like I’ve got a sackful of puppies wriggling around down there. Call the doctor and have me intubated for a film session. I’m gonna need an IV. When are those people going to learn to clean the shrimp?

Nancy: I don’t know sir. Now, there’s been a change in the–

Saban: Where’s Tom?

Nancy: Due to some budget cuts, there’s been a change. Tom’s no longer the co-host.

Saban: I don’t like this. Where the hell is Tom?

Enter PRODUCER ED.

Ed: He’s pursuing other opportunities. Listen, Coach. The recession’s hit our donations, and we’ve got to take some steps. We’ve saved money one way by outsourcing the job of co-host to a company called International Media Solutions. They’re out of Bangalore.

Saban: India? So I’m just supposed to talk to this tv? Who’s gonna be on it?

Ed: IMS has provided a host who will read our questions. They also have some graphics ready for us, produced in house by them.

Saban: So who’s gonna be hosting this? (more…)

For just $35, you and your loved ones can get your faces rocked off by the Dark Lord of Rock himself: NICK SABAN. That’s only a dollar per soul-scorching glare! Or fifty cents per use of the word “process!”

The Crimson Caravan Tour will hit all of the top spots, of course: Bimini, Ibiza, Davos, Yalta. Just kidding: they’ll be traipsing through the very dark heart of Trucksylvania itself: Mobile, Panama City, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Atlanta, where Saban and Three Doors Down will treat the Gwinnett Arena to an evening of conditioning drills and songs for guys with goatees and tribal armband tattoos.

Dress is business casual. As for the definition of that…

…why, yes sir! That’s exactly what we meant by “business casual.” See you there!

Go to about 2:50. Expect an audible “shit.” Gawk in awe.

Anger come in layers. When you watch Mike Gundy get mad, there’s obvious hurt underneath the anger; you get the feeling Mike Gundy puts on anger like a dusty formal suit, trotting it out for special occasions like funerals. He gets angry on principle, not because there’s some underlying rage just seething and waiting to explode. When Dennis Green grows angry, there’s obvious frustration and confusion, but no sort of basic low-boil of anger. When Herm Edwards goes nuts…well, he’s obviously suffering from the deleterious effects of parasitic worms dining on his brain.

When Nick Saban gets angry, the air in the room grows frosty, all hope evaporates, and metal objects begin to wiggle and slide toward him. We mean this: it is one of the most frightening things we have ever seen, and we have been through an earthquake in an Asian city, a motorcycle accident, and a night out in Phnom Penh. There’s just anger there, and more anger, and if you get out the excavator and start digging, still more deep and untapped reserves of anger. If we could turn it into a form of energy, we could tell Saudi Arabia to fuck themselves five minutes after the technology was completed.

Nick Saban is Ahab. He is bottomless in his complexity and terrifying in his anger, and capable of speaking whatever language needs to be spoken to get his point across. In another age, he’d be holding onto the harpoon five hundred feet below the surface of the ocean. His ears would bleed in another hundred feet as the whale with the harpoon embedded in its hide dove deeper and deeper; the rope would bloody his already shredded hands. Soon, he’d turn inside out from the pressure. But he’d die with that fucking rope in his hands.

(HT: Friends of the Program.

Grab your bitch rifles, campers, and call up the local stations. BREAKING BREAKING MUST CREDIT NYTIMES OP-ED COLUMN:� Buzz Bissinger says college football fans are outlandish, and Nick Saban seems like an unpleasant fella on the sidelines!� And he leads with “I am watching the Alabama-Clemson football game. It�s a pretty good contest, actually”, so we know we’re in for a barrel a’giggles.� With apologies to Fire Joe Morgan, let’s cut this up a little:

I am just watching the crazy spectacle of it all � frenzy and bloodlust and the low rumble of moans and the high-pitch of screams. I wonder why we need any more studies showing our nation�s education system to be in the tank when all you have to do is attend a college football game.

This is still the guy who wrote Friday Night Lights, right?� How do you immerse yourself in, of all places, Texas football culture and come away with the capacity to be startled by the fervor of any fanbase, anywhere, ever?

Nick Saban is the head coach of Alabama. I don�t see much joy in Nick Saban as he coaches the Crimson Tide against Clemson, even though his team is playing rather well and will ultimately win, 34-10. I see a lot of determined marching back and forth by Nick Saban on the sidelines.

Ah, but therein lies his charm, sir.

Saban, in a rare unguarded moment of glee.

(more…)

The Fulmer Cup competition for 2008 ends tonight at midnight, and barring any West Virginia triple murders, Missouri drug busts, or the FBI unearthing a sleeper cell at Michigan, (Buckeye fan: “I knew it!”) this cat is skinned, and its coat is crimson and white. Um, actually, so is the cat, now that we’ve gotten the hide off and everything. What the hell are we supposed to do with this thing? It is pissed.

Congratulations are due to your winner, with a total of 28 points. Some people would say congratulations to someone who just won such a prestigious award. For such an occasion as this, we won’t just crack out the standard Asti Spumante—no, only the Andre Cold Duck Pink will do, and only if we have buckets and buckets of it.

Pop the cork, take a bow, and let the celebrations begin: a champion arriveth. Congratulations to Alabama on their 72nd national title, which Nick Saban appropriately does not have time to accept in person. Roll, Tide, Roll.

Jimmy Johns must be noted for his outstanding work in making this happen, selling cocaine an incomprehensible number of times to undercover cops in Tuscaloosa, but he wasn’t alone. Jeremy Elder, while not particularly good at robbery, was certainly enthusiastic enough to rack up points for two counts of first-degree robbery.

Johns and Elder alone would have won the Copa del Malfeasance, but teammate A.J. Walker kicked in by walking around drunk on the strip. But we’ve done that, you say! Of course you have, and if you are currently on the roster of the Crimson Tide, we invite you to submit your points to be tallied with the rest.

(Note: SAS Wiki includes Rashad Johnson’s dismissed charges for disorderly conduct on their total. This is an error, but the point total is not: 20 for Johns, a conservative seven for Elder, and one for poor A.J.’s solo Jagermeister Tango down the strip.)

This leaves the Ellis T. Jones Award for Outstanding individual Achievement In A Single Crime, which this year must also be awarded to Johns, who racked up twenty points for having the persistence to sell cocaine to undercover officers not once, but FIVE times. That kind of stick-to-it-iveness gets you championships. And lengthy jail sentences.

Our petitions for an award ceremony rebuffed, we had to rely on hidden camera footage take of Nick Saban at home to get any reaction from the most powerful coach in sport. From appearances, the Fulmer Cup is just one more piece of motivation to put on your wall.
(more…)

Smart Football is here to explain the nuts and bolts of what’s actually happening on the field–or what should happen–in the biggest game in week one, Clemson versus Alabama at the Georgia Dome. Warning: long, brilliant, and extremely informative, meaning it should be a jolt to regular readers’ senses given the usual fare here. Enjoy.–O/S.

This article presents my own Smart Football brand of review for the upcoming Clemson-Alabama game, which is great for me because I�m not actually going to predict who wins the game at all, thus saving me the humiliation of being wrong and preventing this article from becoming irrelevant a week after having been written.

Saban brings the Belichick-brain to the game. Spence brings the refab’d Run ‘n Shoot. NERD JAM GO!

The reason I’m not making such a prediction is because I�m talking today about schemes, and who actually wins this game probably will have done so less because they outschemed their opponent (since both coaches will have great schemes), but instead because of some combination of talent, execution, and luck, and these are things I don�t have any particular insight into.

So I’m just going to analyze one of the better coaching matchups of this season. (more…)

This…this really isn’t Nick Saban heading to work on a normal day, is it?

The video–which for the video-impaired shows a 12 car, six motorcycle strong motorcade bullrushing through the middle of UA’s campus–was uploaded on July 28th, 2007, and the description reads:

Nick Saban’s daily routine, heading to work, on University Blvd here on campus at Alabama. We go jogging early and decided to bring a camera one day to catch a glimpse of our beloved coach.

We’ve seen the motorcades they use to ferry around members of the People’s Congress and the Chinese politburo around Beijing, and you’ll be sadly unsurprised to know that this is comparable to those. It kicks the stuffing out of the Laotian VIP motorcade, though; one motorcycle with a gumball light and three 1994 Mercedes do not prestigious, awe-inspiring display of privilege make.

Now someone please tell us this is a rare occasion, and that Saban doesn’t roll through like this weekly anymore, and we’ll go back to being oblivious about the obscene amount of power granted the head coach of Alabama. (For all we know, he’s signing death warrants and running his own jails.)

Update: Old video, of course. We still think he runs his own secret prisons.