This week’s bombshell battle between Alabama coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher included a vague claim from Fisher that Saban’s complaints about the new name, image, and likeness reality of NCAA football ring hollow because he violated the prior rules.
“The parity in college football he’s been talking about?” Fisher said during Thursday’s epic press conference. “Go talk to coaches who coached for him. You’ll find out all the parity. Go dig into where he’s been. You can find out anything. . . . Some people think they’re God. Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find out about a guy that -- a lot of things you don’t want to know. We’ve built him up to be the czar of football. Go dig into his past, or anybody that’s ever coached with him. You can find out anything you wanna find out, what he does and how he does it. And it’s despicable. . . . Just go ask all the people who worked for him, who know exactly what he’s about. . . . You coach with people like Bobby Bowden and learn how to do things. You coach with other people and learn how not to do things. There’s a reason I ain’t went back and worked for him with opportunities. Don’t wanna be associated with it.”
That’s fine, but Fisher is one of the people who previously coached with Saban. If there are beans to spill, why didn’t Fisher spill them?
Meanwhile, Saban apparently has not yet responded to Fisher’s ambiguous suggestion that Saban cheated in some way. (If Saban did so on Thursday, when apologizing to Fisher and Jackson State coach while also tripling down on his NIL get-off-my-lawn rant, his comments were overlooked by the media at large.)
However this all plays out, and as Peter King said during Friday’s PFT Live, it would be nice to know more about what Fisher contends. About what happened in the past. About what is happening now.
College football always has carried the amorphous stink of secret payments to players. Now, there are no secrets. If folks complaining about the current rules have skeletons in the closet, let’s hear the bones rattle.
Whether it’s Fisher or someone else, let’s hear what Saban supposedly did. And let’s hear what he has to say about it.