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Landomatic

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5 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:


He didn’t have to trot him out there. Not like the guy needs the practice and Bama should be able to beat that horrible team running the single wing. Saban was trying for style points. It fucked him. It fucked Tua.

Bullshit.  So none of the starters should play when they’re playing shitty teams.  Just in case they might get hurt?  Give me a fucking break.  I might give it to you if it was late in the 4th and they were up by 50.  Then sure...what are your starters still doing out there?  This was the second quarter.  Your starters are still in the game.  On every team by every coach.

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Landomatic

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16 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:

If your Heisman candidate qb is still banged up, yeah you fucking sit him against a shitty team. Plain and simple. Make him available in case of emergency. Bama sets up their bullshit schedule to rest as many guys as possible. They could afford to sit him.

Clearly you don’t know much about football.  Everyone’s “banged up” by this point in the season.  You have no clue to what level Tua was “banged up” (looked pretty good before he got hurt) and you have no clue that him being “banged up” had a damn thing to do with this injury (didn’t look like it to me).  Tua’s playing in that game at that moment on almost every team in the country.

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Jkwellborn

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Clearly you don’t know much about football.  Everyone’s “banged up” by this point in the season.  You have no clue to what level Tua was “banged up” (looked pretty good before he got hurt) and you have no clue that him being “banged up” had a damn thing to do with this injury (didn’t look like it to me).  Tua’s playing in that game at that moment on almost every team in the country.

I’m well aware of the fact that at this point, practically everyone is nursing some type of injury or ailment. That’s what happens when big strong people knock the fuck out of each other a lot. But unless what I was hearing last week was just made up, Tua wasn’t cleared to play until Wednesday or so. I never even made mention that his previous injury had anything to do with this other than he was out on the field.
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Bama Llama

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Tua has now been injured for the fourth time trying to extend a play when he should have thrown the ball away.  It's a flaw, maybe the only one, in his game.  For the sake of football, I hope his surgery is successful and that he plays again with a bionic hip.  He's the best passer ever at Alabama and I saw Joe Namath play live several times.  Joe, before his knee injury, was a better runner, but Tua's the more accurate.  Tua himself will always be a winner, football or no football. Blaming Nick Saban is off the mark.  This one's on Tua.  Football involves high speed collisions of large, fast bodies.  QBs should avoid them whenever possible.

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LTtxfan

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Lane Kiffin is reportedly gunning for Nick Saban’s staff members — including the big one

By Zach Barnett -
 December 11, 2019

Lane Kiffin has been Ole Miss’s head coach for three days, and already the Rebels’ hire is paying off in dramatic terms.

According to a report Wednesday from Aaron Suttles of The Athletic — who covers the Crimson Tide as well as anyone — Kiffin is working to bring as many current, former and potential Alabama coaches as he can get his hands on. That list starts with Scott Cochran, whom Suttles reports Kiffin has offered an on-the-field coaching spot in order to get him to leave Tuscaloosa.

Cochran is widely viewed as the most important staff member in Tuscaloosa other than The Man himself, joining Saban’s staff as the strength and conditioning coach in 2007 and remaining in place ever since. In fact, Cochran is the only Alabama staff member still in the same role dating back to Saban’s 2007 hiring outside of Saban. He also makes $595,000 at Alabama, fifth highest among strength coaches in all of college football.

Other coaches on Kiffin’s radar include current secondary coach Karl Scott, former Alabama defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi and former Alabama defensive line coach Bo Davis. Lupoi spent 2014-18 on Saban’s staff, rising from a defensive analyst to defensive coordinator, and is now the Cleveland Browns’ defensive line coach. Davis deposited multiple stints as Saban’s defensive line coach and now works in the same role with the Detroit Lions.

In addition to hiring ace recruiters with SEC experience, Suttles reports the hirings are driven by a personal animosity Kiffin harbors toward Saban, stemming from his curt dismissal in between the College Football Playoff semifinals and finals in the 2016 season. As Suttles writes:

It’s been nearly three years since Saban unceremoniously fired Kiffin, his offensive coordinator, two days after Alabama beat Washington in the 2016 College Football Playoff semifinal at the Peach Bowl. Saban fired Kiffin a week before the national championship game. Kiffin was embarrassed. Kiffin was angry. Kiffin hasn’t forgotten.

That dismissal fueled Kiffin’s desire to return to the SEC and a burning passion to exact revenge on Saban, multiple people with knowledge of the matter told The Athletic.

The timing here is hilariously ironic, as Wednesday’s bombshell follows the Tuesday night premier of an HBO documentary on the friendship between Saban and Bill Belichick, which includes an exchange where Saban expresses frustration at former assistants who — often having taken SEC jobs — attempt to build their new staffs by pilfering the former boss.

“We’ve always had sort of a mutual respect for how we sort of take each other’s people,” Saban says to Belichick, via AL.com. “It’s one thing that I always try to emphasize to the guys: what I have a tough time with, aight, is we’ve had however many guys who have worked here who are at Georgia, Tennessee — whoever, wherever — is when they get those jobs, and in most cases you’ve helped them, is they have a hard time understanding why they can’t take your people.  “I’m gonna help you get a job, (only) so that you can take what I’ve tried to build here and destroy the continuity of what I have? It’s amazing how some of the assistants don’t understand why that’s not a good thing.”

Cochran isn’t just one of Saban’s “people.” He’s his person, the lone direct line from the beginning of the Crimson Dynasty to today and, in fact, the only coach (again, outside of Saban himself) who deals with the players on a daily basis that hasn’t changed over during the time Alabama’s rising seniors have been on campus. (Suttles’ report does not touch on Cochran’s answer to Kiffin’s reported offer, but from the way it’s written it seems as if Cochran passed.)

That conversation above was recorded last spring, so Saban couldn’t have known at that time Kiffin would return to his life in the form of a division rival trying to poach his most valuable staff member.

But, boy oh boy, I think we can all agree it’s a shame HBO’s cameras didn’t capture his reaction to this Lane Kiffin move.  😂😂😂

https://footballscoop.com/news/lane-kiffin-is-reportedly-gunning-for-nick-sabans-staff-members-including-the-big-one/

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LTtxfan

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FootballScoop

Nick Saban and his staff have a scouting report for officiating crews. Here’s why…

By Doug Samuel    January 1, 2020

A New York Times best selling book could be put together on the all the things that makes Nick Saban and The Process that has made Alabama one of the elite programs of college football.  From recruiting, to developing coaches and a winning game plan, to instilling a championship culture and maximizing the talent of his players Saban could teach a masterclass…and that’s just the major stuff. What separates guys like Saban from the rest are the little things.   AL.com did an article recently on one of those little things Saban and his staff do that I’d bet most coaches haven’t even thought about.

The morning before each game, the Alabama staff meet and a summary of the crew assigned is shared to let coaches everything they need to know about their call history.  “We have a list of all the things they call become some crews call things more often than others. Some referees you know protect the quarterback and call roughing the passer. Some guys call more pass interference than others. Some umpires call a lot more holding so we always want to know what’s the history of what these crews call.”    

That information is then shared with players before they hit the field.

It will come as no surprise that, of all penalties, pass interference is the moss difficult call to scout officials for when assessing the crews because it has the least consistency in how it is called.  Saban and his staff also provide feedback to the officiating crews post game in an effort for both the coaches and crew to improve, and to also find ways to better coach their players after they know exactly what officials are looking for.

“The only way that they have to improve what they do is if you ask ‘Why was this call and why was it called and then they give feedback. And sometimes they admit they that what they did was maybe not exactly right but it gives them an opportunity to know it and it gives you an opportunity to know how to coach the players.”

While the obvious takeaway here is another nugget that makes Saban so good, I think that there is also a lesson here on how coaches may be able to help bridge the gap between ourselves and officials during a time when the numbers in officiating are facing a crisis. Perhaps that’s an article idea for another time.

 

Head here to read the full piece from AL.com.

Nick Saban explains how Alabama scouts referee crews, analyzes them after games

https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/2019/12/nick-saban-explains-how-alabama-scouts-referee-crews-analyzes-them-after-games.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=aldotcomSports_sf

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closetojumping

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On 12/11/2019 at 12:36 PM, LTtxfan said:

Lane Kiffin is reportedly gunning for Nick Saban’s staff members — including the big one

By Zach Barnett -
 December 11, 2019

Lane Kiffin has been Ole Miss’s head coach for three days, and already the Rebels’ hire is paying off in dramatic terms.

According to a report Wednesday from Aaron Suttles of The Athletic — who covers the Crimson Tide as well as anyone — Kiffin is working to bring as many current, former and potential Alabama coaches as he can get his hands on. That list starts with Scott Cochran, whom Suttles reports Kiffin has offered an on-the-field coaching spot in order to get him to leave Tuscaloosa.

Cochran is widely viewed as the most important staff member in Tuscaloosa other than The Man himself, joining Saban’s staff as the strength and conditioning coach in 2007 and remaining in place ever since. In fact, Cochran is the only Alabama staff member still in the same role dating back to Saban’s 2007 hiring outside of Saban. He also makes $595,000 at Alabama, fifth highest among strength coaches in all of college football.

Other coaches on Kiffin’s radar include current secondary coach Karl Scott, former Alabama defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi and former Alabama defensive line coach Bo Davis. Lupoi spent 2014-18 on Saban’s staff, rising from a defensive analyst to defensive coordinator, and is now the Cleveland Browns’ defensive line coach. Davis deposited multiple stints as Saban’s defensive line coach and now works in the same role with the Detroit Lions.

In addition to hiring ace recruiters with SEC experience, Suttles reports the hirings are driven by a personal animosity Kiffin harbors toward Saban, stemming from his curt dismissal in between the College Football Playoff semifinals and finals in the 2016 season. As Suttles writes:

It’s been nearly three years since Saban unceremoniously fired Kiffin, his offensive coordinator, two days after Alabama beat Washington in the 2016 College Football Playoff semifinal at the Peach Bowl. Saban fired Kiffin a week before the national championship game. Kiffin was embarrassed. Kiffin was angry. Kiffin hasn’t forgotten.

That dismissal fueled Kiffin’s desire to return to the SEC and a burning passion to exact revenge on Saban, multiple people with knowledge of the matter told The Athletic.

The timing here is hilariously ironic, as Wednesday’s bombshell follows the Tuesday night premier of an HBO documentary on the friendship between Saban and Bill Belichick, which includes an exchange where Saban expresses frustration at former assistants who — often having taken SEC jobs — attempt to build their new staffs by pilfering the former boss.

“We’ve always had sort of a mutual respect for how we sort of take each other’s people,” Saban says to Belichick, via AL.com. “It’s one thing that I always try to emphasize to the guys: what I have a tough time with, aight, is we’ve had however many guys who have worked here who are at Georgia, Tennessee — whoever, wherever — is when they get those jobs, and in most cases you’ve helped them, is they have a hard time understanding why they can’t take your people.  “I’m gonna help you get a job, (only) so that you can take what I’ve tried to build here and destroy the continuity of what I have? It’s amazing how some of the assistants don’t understand why that’s not a good thing.”

Cochran isn’t just one of Saban’s “people.” He’s his person, the lone direct line from the beginning of the Crimson Dynasty to today and, in fact, the only coach (again, outside of Saban himself) who deals with the players on a daily basis that hasn’t changed over during the time Alabama’s rising seniors have been on campus. (Suttles’ report does not touch on Cochran’s answer to Kiffin’s reported offer, but from the way it’s written it seems as if Cochran passed.)

That conversation above was recorded last spring, so Saban couldn’t have known at that time Kiffin would return to his life in the form of a division rival trying to poach his most valuable staff member.

But, boy oh boy, I think we can all agree it’s a shame HBO’s cameras didn’t capture his reaction to this Lane Kiffin move.  😂😂😂

https://footballscoop.com/news/lane-kiffin-is-reportedly-gunning-for-nick-sabans-staff-members-including-the-big-one/

Just seeing this, but the article is simply fucking wrong. There are still multiple people at Bama that came in with Nick Saban - not just one. One of them is a female in a critical and acclaimed role for the organization. I can tell you with certainty that the majority of the people who endured the Joey Freshwater Experience in the football administration at Bama have no interest in rekindling any of that with the fucking guy. 

Also, he was fired the week of the title game because he'd already accepted the FAU job and was skipping practices and functions while being holed up in a hotel room, paid for by Bama, with Kendal Briles as they were going through their contact lists and reaching out to assistant coach candidates and attempting to poach recruits. 

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LTtxfan

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On 2/15/2020 at 4:37 PM, LTtxfan said:

Charlie Strong: Source tells FootballScoop after fielding a number of offers from various SEC programs, Charlie Strong appears to have selected Alabama as his next stop. We hear an agreement could be in place soon. Stay tuned…

 

Making "Mo Money"

 
According to the article, USF owes Strong $3.1 million. Taking a non-coaching job means Strong gets that money
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Tex Long

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1 hour ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Making "Mo Money"

 
According to the article, USF owes Strong $3.1 million. Taking a non-coaching job means Strong gets that money

Back in 2019, maybe earlier, I believe Mr Strong purchased a home in the USF environs for pretty close to that same number of dollars. Many Surlarchitects made fun of the estate and its buildings, including His and Hers two-car garages, at opposite ends of the main building.

Hmmmm.

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G650

G650 14246

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3 hours ago, Wally Fairway said:

I'm not a huge Nick guy - but what he says in this clip, IMO, is 100% accurate. 

What he says is very accurate of what we went through with my son - who was given 2nd (3rd  & 4th) chances when he was a teenager. 

Saban off the top rope. His press conferences are more fun to watch than football games.

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Tex Long

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1 hour ago, bamachine said:

Currently in the rumor mill, is that Sark has interviewed for the Colorado job and may be the front runner. In that same rumor mill, his replacement as the Bama OC, Hugh Freeze.

Well... Willie always said that switching from booze to pot saved his life, so maybe Sark's on that pathway?

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LTtxfan

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Steve Sarkisian: ESPN’s Chris Low has tweeted that Steve Sarkisian plans to remain at Alabama. Source told FootballScoop this afternoon that Sark and Nick Saban spoke today at the Alabama football offices. Following that meeting, Sark removed himself from the CU process.

Alabama: Matt Zenitz is reporting Butch Jones new title at Alabama is likely to be special assistant to Nick Saban.

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Cairn Horn88

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6 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

Steve Sarkisian: ESPN’s Chris Low has tweeted that Steve Sarkisian plans to remain at Alabama. Source told FootballScoop this afternoon that Sark and Nick Saban spoke today at the Alabama football offices. Following that meeting, Sark removed himself from the CU process.

Alabama: Matt Zenitz is reporting Butch Jones new title at Alabama is likely to be special assistant to Nick Saban.

Well, well, well.....mo $$$$$$$$

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LTtxfan

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https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/2020/02/kirby-smart-stealing-scott-cochran-an-sec-act-of-war.html 

 

Kirby Smart stealing Scott Cochran an SEC act of war

Maximum damage.

If a rival coach wanted to mastermind a plot to cause the most disruption to Alabama’s football team, then hiring away strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran during winter workouts would be the ultimate kill shot.  Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss flirted with Cochran earlier this offseason, but Georgia coach Kirby Smart succeeded in hiring him away on Monday. Arguably Alabama’s most important asset beyond Nick Saban himself and Alabama’s passionate boosters, Cochran is leaving the Crimson Tide to coach special teams for the Bulldogs.

Shots fired, and Saban’s storied Process has taken a direct hit. Hiring away Cochran right now, during the middle of Alabama’s winter strength and conditioning program, is nothing short of calculated corporate warfare.

Inside Alabama, it is being viewed as exactly that, an act of all out war. Cochran didn’t even address the team after the news broke. Just left.

Georgia plays at Alabama on Sept. 19, so that should be fun. The Bulldogs have dominated the SEC East since Smart’s arrival, but he has famously lost to his former boss in one championship game (national or SEC) after another. This was a big win for Kirby, though.

If Saban was the head and brain of The Process, then Cochran was the voice, the heart and the muscle. Make no mistake, this is SEC sabotage of the highest order by Smart even if Cochran was looking for a fresh start.

The timing is important.

This is the second week of Cochran’s four-weeks-long “fourth-quarter program,” which is Alabama’s most valuable month of the offseason for team building. Winter workouts are when teams are made in college football. Players suffer together and forge bonds. Accountability is taught and leaders emerge. It doesn’t happen during the season.

Cochran’s “fourth-quarter program” has produced an entire generation of professional football players for Alabama, and they all credit Cochran for breaking them down and building them up. Running back Josh Jacobs called Cochran the team’s “glue." Beyond that, Cochran was the person in the program who players relied upon when they had problems or concerns. He also had the seniority to address things with Saban on behalf of the players.

Saban has promoted one retread coach after another from analyst to assistant. He couldn’t give Cochran a chance?

What a strange way for Saban to lose his most loyal lieutenant. Cochran was the last coach from Saban’s original staff at Alabama in 2007.

In what played like damage control on Monday, Saban told ESPN that Cochran wanted to be an on-field coach at Alabama and Saban didn’t think he was ready. Maybe so, but this is a huge loss for Alabama, and there is no other way to spin that.

The SEC West is celebrating this bombshell news, and toasting Georgia’s coach for dropping it. It might seem like a small thing outside the South, the hiring away of a strength and conditioning coach, but this is the story of the offseason for Alabama, the biggest brand in the game.

Credit Smart for sensing a vulnerability at Alabama, a program he knows inside and out, and exploiting it. There is no offseason in the SEC, and the best are always recruiting.

Speaking of which, Cochran will now have the ability to recruit against Alabama. He wasn’t allowed to do that for the Crimson Tide, per NCAA rules, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t heavily marketed by the football team.

He was so popular in Alabama, Cochran even appeared in commercials for Regions Bank alongside Saban. The program’s catchphrase was “Built by Bama,” and Cochran was the foreman on the job site. He crafted team team culture, and enforced the discipline. He turned players into first-round picks in the weight room.

This isn’t the end of everything for Alabama by any means, but it is the end of an era. Cochran has been on every single one of Saban’s national championship staffs. With the loss of Burton Burns to the NFL earlier this winter, it makes you wonder how much Saban has left.

Alabama will find another excellent strength and conditioning coach, and it could be argued that losing offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian to Colorado earlier this week would have been far more devastating to Saban’s chances of winning the national title next season. This loss of Cochran is more about the long-term projection of Alabama football.

The fourth quarter for Saban is here. 

 

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LTtxfan

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Sexton cleans up Ex-Head Coaches mistakes on Saban's staff...

https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/2020/02/nick-sabans-stockpile-of-former-head-coaches-is-the-stuff-of-great-reality-tv.html

Nick Saban’s stockpile of former head coaches the stuff of great reality TV

Posted Feb 20, 2020

By Joseph Goodman | jgoodman@al.com

The bizarre number of former head coaches now on Alabama’s staff is your latest sign that major college football has completely flown off the rails.  Charlie Strong was hired on Tuesday as an analyst bringing the number to six. Seriously, how many former head coaches is it going to take for Nick Saban to win another national championship? The great quest to surpass Paul Bryant in total titles will take every available brain in the profession apparently.  Saban now has just as many former head coaches on his staff as he has national championships.

It is all so absolutely fascinating what Saban has done to college football over the last 12 years. Strong’s hire is just the latest example. Saban had one of the worst seasons of his career defensively in 2019, so now he’s bringing in one of the game’s best defensive minds to be an assistant to an assistant.

Sure, Strong is a better defensive coach than his boss, defensive coordinator Pete Golding. It doesn’t take much insight to understand that. That’s not the great takeaway here, though. Alabama isn’t a team. Alabama is an empire.  May I offer but one request from the peasants to His Majesty the King? Could we please have a reality TV show from inside Alabama’s Mal Moore Athletic Facility? No more propaganda recruiting puff pieces by HBO and ESPN. I’m talking real bro-drama stuff, palace intrigue for the gents.

The former head coaches now on Saban’s staff: Strong, Mike Stoops (analyst), Major Applewhite (analyst), Butch Jones (analyst), Steve Sarkisian (offensive coordinator/former analyst) and Kyle Flood (offensive line).

Hat tip to agent Jimmy Sexton for helping make it all happen. Sexton is the voice behind the throne, and uses Saban’s unchecked power at Alabama to scrub fired coaching clients clean and then send them back out into the profession. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin got the rinse and clean, and so did Maryland coach Mike Locksley.

Locksley said it best when he won the Broyles Award for being the top assistant in the country. Previously an interim head coach at Maryland, the former Alabama analyst turned Alabama offensive coordinator called the empire “Nick Saban’s witness-protection program.”   Now he’s back at Maryland as the Terps’ permanent head coach and his record was 3-9 in his first season.

Strong is now the most accomplished assistant on Saban’s staff. Consider his circular path back to the SEC for the proper perspective of just how radically different college football is now compared to when Saban began reshaping the sport with his dynasty at Alabama.  Strong was the defensive coordinator of the 2008 Florida Gators, which were one of the most talented college football teams in SEC history. It was the height of Urban Meyer’s success in Gainesville, and that team was absolutely loaded down with superstars (and mischief).

They had their problems, but man were they something on paper.  Tim Tebow was the 2007 winner of the Heisman Trophy and 2010 Heisman winner Cam Newton was his backup (for most of the season). Running back Jeff Demps was so fast he actually won silver medals in the 2012 London Olympics.  Percy Harvin was faster in pads, though.

Strong’s defense reduced the highest-scoring offense in the country to just two touchdowns in the 2009 BCS national championship game. Florida’s 24-14 victory against Oklahoma and reigning Heisman winner Sam Bradford featured two goal-line stands.  That Gators’ coaching staff was excellent. Five of Meyer’s assistant coaches later became head coaches themselves, including Strong (Louisville, Texas and South Florida) and offensive coordinator Dan Mullen (Mississippi State and now Florida). Think about all that knowledge and expertise. What brilliance, right? What a moment in history.

What a completely different time for college football.

I write all this for an important reason: to illustrate just how preposterous college football has become for the University of Alabama. That Florida coaching staff, arguably one of the greatest in SEC history, featured five future head coaches not including Meyer. This current Alabama coaching staff under the legendary Saban now has six former head coaches in the barn, and four of them are just there to break down film and clap during practice.

It begs the question: is one of them now the head coach in waiting? Cue the reality TV show theme music.

 

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LTtxfan

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28 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/2020/02/kirby-smart-stealing-scott-cochran-an-sec-act-of-war.html 

Kirby Smart stealing Scott Cochran an SEC act of war

Maximum damage.

If a rival coach wanted to mastermind a plot to cause the most disruption to Alabama’s football team, then hiring away strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran during winter workouts would be the ultimate kill shot.  Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss flirted with Cochran earlier this offseason, but Georgia coach Kirby Smart succeeded in hiring him away on Monday. Arguably Alabama’s most important asset beyond Nick Saban himself and Alabama’s passionate boosters, Cochran is leaving the Crimson Tide to coach special teams for the Bulldogs.

Shots fired, and Saban’s storied Process has taken a direct hit. Hiring away Cochran right now, during the middle of Alabama’s winter strength and conditioning program, is nothing short of calculated corporate warfare.

Inside Alabama, it is being viewed as exactly that, an act of all out war. Cochran didn’t even address the team after the news broke. Just left.

Georgia plays at Alabama on Sept. 19, so that should be fun. The Bulldogs have dominated the SEC East since Smart’s arrival, but he has famously lost to his former boss in one championship game (national or SEC) after another. This was a big win for Kirby, though.

If Saban was the head and brain of The Process, then Cochran was the voice, the heart and the muscle. Make no mistake, this is SEC sabotage of the highest order by Smart even if Cochran was looking for a fresh start.

The timing is important.

This is the second week of Cochran’s four-weeks-long “fourth-quarter program,” which is Alabama’s most valuable month of the offseason for team building. Winter workouts are when teams are made in college football. Players suffer together and forge bonds. Accountability is taught and leaders emerge. It doesn’t happen during the season.

Cochran’s “fourth-quarter program” has produced an entire generation of professional football players for Alabama, and they all credit Cochran for breaking them down and building them up. Running back Josh Jacobs called Cochran the team’s “glue." Beyond that, Cochran was the person in the program who players relied upon when they had problems or concerns. He also had the seniority to address things with Saban on behalf of the players.

Saban has promoted one retread coach after another from analyst to assistant. He couldn’t give Cochran a chance?

What a strange way for Saban to lose his most loyal lieutenant. Cochran was the last coach from Saban’s original staff at Alabama in 2007.

In what played like damage control on Monday, Saban told ESPN that Cochran wanted to be an on-field coach at Alabama and Saban didn’t think he was ready. Maybe so, but this is a huge loss for Alabama, and there is no other way to spin that.

The SEC West is celebrating this bombshell news, and toasting Georgia’s coach for dropping it. It might seem like a small thing outside the South, the hiring away of a strength and conditioning coach, but this is the story of the offseason for Alabama, the biggest brand in the game.

Credit Smart for sensing a vulnerability at Alabama, a program he knows inside and out, and exploiting it. There is no offseason in the SEC, and the best are always recruiting.

Speaking of which, Cochran will now have the ability to recruit against Alabama. He wasn’t allowed to do that for the Crimson Tide, per NCAA rules, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t heavily marketed by the football team.

He was so popular in Alabama, Cochran even appeared in commercials for Regions Bank alongside Saban. The program’s catchphrase was “Built by Bama,” and Cochran was the foreman on the job site. He crafted team team culture, and enforced the discipline. He turned players into first-round picks in the weight room.

This isn’t the end of everything for Alabama by any means, but it is the end of an era. Cochran has been on every single one of Saban’s national championship staffs. With the loss of Burton Burns to the NFL earlier this winter, it makes you wonder how much Saban has left.

Alabama will find another excellent strength and conditioning coach, and it could be argued that losing offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian to Colorado earlier this week would have been far more devastating to Saban’s chances of winning the national title next season. This loss of Cochran is more about the long-term projection of Alabama football.

The fourth quarter for Saban is here. 

 

Twitter stuff...

 

Edited by LTtxfan
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Mitch Cumsteen

Mitch Cumsteen 18547

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I'm surprised this isn't prompting more discussion around here. Lots of angles to this one. Smart poaching the longest tenured and most consistent member of Saban's staff; the unusual professional move from s&c coach to on field coach and what that means going forward for others in the field; how this fuels the Bama / Georgia rivalry; what this means in recruiting; what this means for Saban's short and long term outlook at Bama; etc. To me, this is one of the most interesting developments of this off season so far. 

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closetojumping

closetojumping 62568

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I posted this where it is being discussed on the recruiting board as well, but I'll paste it here. A few of us on this site have a few friends that are deep inside the machine at Bama:

Since I guess this is the thread where you hillbillies have chosen to discuss the Bama S&C coach, Cochran, leaving, I'll post an update here. I spoke with a good friend who is also very close to Cochran today. It's a big deal, all the way around. Anyone dismissing that is an uninformed idiot or spinning. It's also not a move because the guy is buddies with Kirby Smart. That's so reductive that it isn't even worth further addressing. 

Also, Swinney might get a call in a year or two when Saban is gone, but the assumption is that Cristobal would be the guy. I view Mario Cristobal as a barely functioning idiot on par with Tom Herman, so I'd celebrate that hire. It would be Kirby Smart 2.0. Maybe either guy figures out the strategic aspects of the game and they start winning titles, but right now both look like two dipshits that can and will cheat their asses off and then cross their fingers that they can simply out-talent everyone they play. 

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15042

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Texas is going to have to start playing the full game here pretty soon or it risks a long-term decline behind about 5-8 other programs, including potentially A&M. The NCAA has demonstrated a complete inability or willingness to police its members. Texas, Notre Dame, and Michigan are being backed into a pretty big corner.

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49148

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What will Alabama look like without Scott Cochran?

By Zach Barnett -     February 27, 2020

Nick-Saban.jpg?fit=1000,600&ssl=1

Credit: Matt Bush-USA TODAY Sports

A year ago, I dug into the archives to quantify the insane level of staff turnover Alabama had endured over the past few years. At that time, Nick Saban had cycled through four offensive coordinators in four seasons, four quarterbacks coaches in four seasons, four wide receivers coaches in four seasons, three defensive coordinators in three seasons and seven defensive backs coaches in seven seasons.

The Crimson Tide won two national titles over that span and recruited No. 1 classes annually, but that level of turnover had to be unsustainable, right? Right?

Turns out, Saban agreed. Alabama missed the College Football Playoff for the first time in the 6-year history of the system and dropped two regular season games for the first time since 2010, but Saban retained nearly his entire staff. Defensive line coach Brian Baker was demoted to an off-the-field role — he’s since left for the Indianapolis Colts — and Freddie Roach was hired back as his replacement. Other than that relatively minor move (the Tide is now on its fourth D-line coach in as many years), Saban kept the band together.

And then Monday happened.

Scott Cochran rocked the college football world when he walked away from his 13-year role as Alabama’s defensive line coach to become Georgia’s special teams coordinator.

Cochran was part of the reason Alabama sustained that game of musical chairs in the staff room. He was the coach who had day-to-day contact with the players, the guy who put Saban’s plan into action, the COO of Process, Inc.

With Cochran gone, the dean of Saban’s senior-level coaching staff is now Pete Golding, who’s spent all of 28 games in crimson and white.

Coach Hire Date Days on Staff
Pete Golding (DC/ILBs) Dec. 15, 2017 805
Jeff Banks (STC/TEs) Jan. 18, 2018 771
Karl Scott (CBs) Jan. 25, 2018 764
Kyle Flood (OL) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Charles Huff (AHC/RBs) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Charles Kelly (Co-DC/S) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Steve Sarkisian (OC/QBs) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Sal Sunseri (OLBs) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Holmon Wiggins (WRs) Feb. 15, 2019 378
Freddie Roach (DL) Feb. 6, 2020 22

The median hire date for Saban’s staff is Feb. 15, 2019 — 54 weeks ago. If the new strength coach was hired today, the average duration of Saban’s 11 most important assistants would be 386 days.

Now, the question I asked last year still applies: How much does this really matter?

And the truth is that’s really hard to answer, especially when trying to forecast the departure of one assistant coach into future wins and losses. Alabama worked in six new assistants last year and lost two games, but they also suffered abnormally bad injury luck. One of those two losses came via two pick-sixes thrown by their backup quarterback, and even then that game would’ve gone to overtime if their kicker hadn’t missed a final-minute chip shot.

So, again, how much does any of this really matter?

It’s not as if Cochran was Alabama’s only strength coach, and Saban’s been at Alabama so long that his lieutenants now have their own lieutenants, and any departed assistant can easily be replaced by someone else with Saban connections. On the current staff, Sarkisian, Sunseri and Roach are all in their second stints working under Saban, and Kelly coached previously under Saban disciples Jimbo Fisher and Jeremy Pruitt. In the strength world, Oregon’s Aaron Feld, Ole Miss’s Wilson Love, Louisiana-Lafayette’s Mark Hocke and South Carolina’s Jeff Dillman all have varying degrees of connections to Saban.

Thirteen years is a long time for one head coach to remain in one place, and it’s several lifetimes for a strength coach. There’s no doubt Cochran’s loss will be felt — especially the timing of his departure, right at the beginning of the Fourth Quarter program, when Cochran and his staff begin preparing the players’ bodies for the upcoming season. But, just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, it won’t fall in a day, and it damn sure wasn’t built on the back of the strength coach, no matter how good he was at the job.

Lest we forget, the most important piece of the puzzle is still in place: The Man himself. Actually, Saban isn’t just a piece of the puzzle, he is the puzzle.

Take, for example, this answer Saban gave to ESPN on a topic completely unrelated to Cochran, for a piece published Wednesday. Emphasis mine.

“…So instead of having 18 seniors, you’ve got eight. You really have a three-year program at a place like this. I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to hurt our program because we’ll do a hell of a job recruiting players leaving other places to come here. But is that good for college football?”

The Machine loses parts from time to time, but it replaces those parts and it keeps on chugging, right over the backs of the competition. The 2020 Alabama team that someone else will now train is comprised largely of recruiting classes ranked No. 5 (2018), No. 1 (2019) and No. 2 (2020).

Alabama has largely left the rest of college football in the dust, competing in a stratosphere comprised only of LSU, Georgia, Clemson and Ohio State. It’s possible we could look back at a hypothetical loss to one of those giants and pinpoint the blame on the exit of a single coach. But that single coach is probably Nick Saban.

https://footballscoop.com/news/what-will-alabama-look-like-without-scott-cochran-probably-like-the-same-old-bama/

Edited by LTtxfan
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