Le Batard: Saban leaves Dolphins as a loser, weasel

BY DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com

The punctuation on the Nick Saban Dolphin Error is greasy and greedy. You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.

Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.

Maybe Saban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few days, he has looked like a complete and utter amateur.

He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower than that. And for this he’ll get a $25 million raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you wonder what USC’s Pete Carroll or Ohio State’s Jim Tressel are worth, doesn’t it?

Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. Saban, a duplicitous one, gets the most lucrative job in college football.

Saban could have fixed his reputation today if he had that mental toughness he is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now. About ”competitive character” and ”overcoming adversity” and blah, blah, blah. You preach it, Nick. But you don’t live it. Not when it’s easier to run away and hide.

Miami, 6-10 against an easy schedule, was swept this year by younger teams in its division — the Jets and Bills. The team isn’t better than when Saban arrived, just older. What little winning Saban has done has been with players left for him by Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt. What’s the best decision Saban has made in two years? Can you name one?

So it makes sense that he would lack hope. But when his players are losing, he asks them to be proud and fight and overcome, even though what they do hurts a hell of a lot more than what he does. But now, reputation in tatters, integrity stained, he runs away from this fight — to be a dictator to kids who question less and have less power to challenge him. Of course he’d go. It’s a good deal easier. And a new crowd eager for a savior can hear his hot-air speeches about being a gladiator.

Saban made Huizenga look like a public fool with all his condescending talk of integrity recently, reprimanding reporters at every turn while his agent secretly kept taking slimy calls from Alabama in the shadows. What a raging fraud Saban sounds like today, every bit as counterfeit as Miami’s Super Bowl expectations.

Oh, a man, even one under contract, is allowed to change his mind and listen to other offers, especially those that double his salary. But what makes Saban’s behavior so unctuous recently is that he had the audacity to question the questioners with super-sized arrogance even while lying all along to his players and his boss. Huizenga has given this man everything he has wanted — given him more than any NFL owner anywhere has given any other coach. He deserves better than this. He deserves better than Saban leaving him to answer the hard questions today.

Makes you wonder, too: Huizenga went after Ricky Williams and his money with cutthroat zeal, and Williams is still paying him back. But Saban just broke a contract, too. There are no outs in Saban’s contract to go back to the minor leagues.

Remember how mad you were when Williams retired? Well, he wasn’t cheating on you. He wasn’t grabbing for more money. His body hurt from a beating, and he wanted to rest. What Saban has done is a more traitorous act — the most traitorous act in the history of the franchise. He’s leaving simply because he couldn’t handle a hard job on the sidelines of a game in which he asks others to be violent. He gave up, in other words. And filing it under ”family” now as a diluter, in search of understanding, rings hollow because you can’t believe anything the man says about this situation. You think he’d be leaving if he were 3-13?

Saban, infomercial sermonizer, talked a lot about loyalty and integrity and toughness.

But, in the end, these were not his guides.

They were only the kinds of things he demanded of others.

You guys are such the bandwagoneers, you probably haven’t had an original thought in your small minds since “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” came out…

LOSERS!!!

Bama will struggle to compete this year.
Nick is going to have a tough time getting
JPW to limit his mistakes in yet another
new offense and a young, inexperienced receiving corps.

Bama has lost to State two years running and the Bulldogs are getting to like it. Sly loves sticking it to Bama, and he should, because they treated him like a slave. Mal Function Moore is one of the biggest sniveling morons to ever screw up an athletic department. As long as he is around Saban or God himself won’t coach a winning Tide Football team.

P.A. out

Yeah, its wearing a straw hat, NOT voting FOR a recruiting rule every coach in the SEC voted AGAINST one year ago after Saban took every other schools top prospects and made it look so easy.

As for the “LSU” fan… I have nothing against you, but sitting there talking about how YOUR coach won the championship… let’s be real. Miles got SCREWED into staying at LSU because Michigan offered to early. If Michigan had waited, Miles would be gone. Oh, and there would be no Miles or LSU if Saban hadn’t put them both on the map.

Y’all can keep hating on Alabama, we expect it. I’ve known about the jealousy my whole life. But to attack someone for wearing a straw hat? Pathetic, and insulting to fans from EVERY school in the SEC.

Culpepper? check. Ronnie Brown? check. Let’s not act like the entire roster was Saban’s boys though, agreed?

Now, can we proceed past the pom-pom cheering for a moment? I think we’ve done the customary “damn you Tiger fans!!”, “yeah, we’ll damn you Tide fans!!” style rah-rah stuff enough. Our hatred is firmly established.

Now let’s show some SEC class and have a frank discussion.

Serious question, and please don’t take this as some swipe or attempt to flame – for it is not.

Just curious, in all honesty, when it was that the Saban hatred began for you. Did you hate him while he was recruting top classes and winning? Or did it begin when he left?

No doubt we’d be filled with rage if/when he leaves us one day, so I’m just trying to understand if it began prior to that. Right now we’re pretty happy with what he’s doing for us. There’s a definite change in the locker room. I need not bore you all with “the process” – you know it better than us. Can we at least admit there is some merit to it? Certainly LSU improved under his watch. Unless the argument is that DiNardo’s teams were better?

Just trying to understand.

…and the same guy also says:

“Yeah, yeah, get the licks in now. Oh yes, and you’re right, St.Leslie did win the NC – but who exactly recruited the players that did it?”

But whose players did Cam Cameron have when he went 1-15? That’s right. And the one win was in overtime. So $aban’s players were winless in regulation.