Even Finebaum gets one right occasionally

[quietfan 233]

http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/pf....xml&coll=3

Nick Saban says he doesn't know how his picture got on both the front and back cover of Alabama's media guide.

In fact, Saban says he didn't know anything about it until the publication came out recently and he was furious as a result. That's easy to believe, right, considering his low profile on the power chart inside the Alabama athletic department.

Regardless, the picture of Saban in his trademark coaching outfit of shorts and a T-shirt under a vest -- even in sweltering 100 degree temperatures -- is there and he appears to be walking on water. Or perhaps, he's only walking over Bryant-Denny Stadium. Below his feet, the headline reads in block letters: "THE PROCESS BEGINS."

The back cover is Saban in the same outfit with his mission statement spelled out in great detail. It's not exactly beach reading. Instead, it consists of your basic self-serving mumbo jumbo about the importance of character development, academic development, athletic development and career development -- all things that are boiler-plate for any high school or college head coach and things you can find in any self-help book at the discount rack at Barnes &Noble.

Naturally, I turned the page expecting to read about Alabama's 12 national championships and Paul "Bear" Bryant, the greatest coach in Tide history. (Is he still considered that now that Saban is 1-0 after the spring game?)

Instead, on the second page of the guide, sure to be a collector's item, were a series of numbers that apparently have become more important in the lore of Alabama history.

The numbers read: 92,138.

Of course, you understand the significance.

In block letters normally reserved for end-of-the- world headlines, those numbers are spelled in crimson above an aerial view of the stadium, besides a caption: "College Football Record."

For a moment, I turned cynical, thinking is this all Alabama football really has to crow about, but I quickly recovered when I read the warm and poignant comments from Saban below about how much the crowd meant to him personally.

The media guide didn't exactly leave the spring game platitudes on the front cover. On page 90, there is a chart of the last 10 years of A-Day crowds (seriously) starting in 1998 with the crowd of 8,968 going right up to this year. In case you were wondering, Mike Shula had 40,000 for his farewell A-Day. This spread goes for two pages and when you flip the book to page 92, you get a chart of the other 12 SEC schools and how they drew for their spring games starting with the Tide and going all the way down to Arkansas and Vanderbilt with a measly 2,000. There is another page of pictures and then there are two more of actual photos from the game. Could a Daniel A. Moore print commemorating the great moment be far behind?

In case you've lost track, that was six straight pages devoted to the A-Day game and if you add the second page of the book with the pictures from up above, that would mark seven total pages in a 208-page book. The media guide devoted a grand total of two pages exclusively to Bear Bryant. You may have heard of him.

The moral of this story: Bryant should have spent more time rustling up a crowd at A-Day than winning six national titles and 14 SEC crowns.

Oh, by the way, Gene Stallings was awarded two pages as well. So if you add up Bryant and Stallings' accomplishments in the media guide, it still pales to the epic spring game.

So what's really going on here?

Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Alabama football has put a temporary hold on Paul Bryant, Gene Stallings and everything that happened prior to Jan. 3, 2007.

Tony Barnhart, probably the most respected sportswriter covering the SEC, recently opined in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "I don't know how many games Alabama is going to win, but this season is really about one thing: Using the star power of Nick Saban to remind people that the Crimson Tide has one of the most tradition-rich programs in the history of college football."

I don't think reasonable people have a problem with this approach. Saban is a rock star and at $4 million a year, his status goes beyond nearly anyone else in the business.

However, I do have a problem when a school with the storied tradition of Alabama comes off looking cheesy and cheap in the media guide by gushing over a spring game as if the world changed on its axis as a result. I thought it was significant at the time and said so in this space. It was a tribute to Saban and more important, shows the hunger and passion for change.

But it's a spring game. Oh sure, recruits are easily swayed and this media guide is supposedly geared toward them. If it were geared toward the media, it lost me at hello.

However, I think more pages should have been devoted to former star players like DeMeco Ryans and Shaun Alexander -- who thankfully are featured in the book and who are probably more persuasive in relation to recruits than showing pictures of fans who went to a game where the admission was free.

Nick Saban is changing the attitude of Alabama football slowly but surely. However, it's time for the university to start adhering to one of the age-old lessons Coach Bryant often used in admonishing his players after showboating following a touchdown.

"When you get in to the end-zone," Bryant used to say, "act like you've been there before."

[AUChizad 0]

While the rabid obsession of Nick Saban and the attendance at a Spring Game is laughable, the solution he's offering on what they SHOULD do is obsess more on their debatable past national championships and a coach who's been dead since any present students have been alive.

Why can't Bama fans focus on the present? Why does it have to be about 25 years ago or a hypothetical predestined future based on little more than desperate hope?

My free advice to you: Let the Bahr die. Let your present coach actually coach one game (besides A-day) before you declare him a God.

You people...

[otterinbham 0]

Here's the thing. Nobody has taken into account that everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, will be gunning for Saban this year. Alabama just won't lose games. Alabama will be knocked around the field.

Nobody will show the kind of mercy that was shown Mike Shula over the past couple of years. Beating Mike Shula 55-0 would have been like kicking a puppy. But everybody wants to take this guy down a peg for his arrogance, his willingness to cut corners, and his general asshattery.

So, let's fast forward to next year after Alabama turns in another 6-6 or 5-7 season. Will these people still be worshipping the guy then?

[AUesquire 1]

Okay, I heard the ultimate this morning on our local sports talk show. They were talking about the coaches poll and how Bama is nowhere to be found. Here's the latest.

"No one gave Bama any votes to get back at Nick Saban. They're jealous of his contract."

[Eagle86 0]

Why would other coaches be jealous? If I'm CTT or CMR, I couldn't wait to face him and take him down a few notches... then place a call to my agent for that hefty raise thats gonna follow.

BTW Esquire... You do know that Phil is an idiot on everything Auburn? Just turn the dial man, turn the dial.

[AU alum 2]

I have to chime in on this one. If you have noticed, no one in the SEC has given the media much grief about Saban (besides Les Miles). Could that be that no one really thinks he'll do much of anything? (except leave SPUAT with a whole bunch of money)

[AUesquire 1]

Why would other coaches be jealous? If I'm CTT or CMR, I couldn't wait to face him and take him down a few notches... then place a call to my agent for that hefty raise thats gonna follow.

BTW Esquire... You do know that Phil is an idiot on everything Auburn? Just turn the dial man, turn the dial.

Unfortunately, AM560 is the ONLY thing we have left down here anymore. ESPN radio lasted about a year and is now gone. Paramore was on a crusade to get rid of CTT until the 2004 season. Then I actually heard him eat crow. He does a decent job but needs to get more guests on instead of having to listen to the same 5 callers every morning.

[Eagle86 0]

Why would other coaches be jealous? If I'm CTT or CMR, I couldn't wait to face him and take him down a few notches... then place a call to my agent for that hefty raise thats gonna follow.

BTW Esquire... You do know that Phil is an idiot on everything Auburn? Just turn the dial man, turn the dial.

Unfortunately, AM560 is the ONLY thing we have left down here anymore. ESPN radio lasted about a year and is now gone. Paramore was on a crusade to get rid of CTT until the 2004 season. Then I actually heard him eat crow. He does a decent job but needs to get more guests on instead of having to listen to the same 5 callers every morning.

He could just start paying people to call in like PF. What I love about Phil is that he actually seems to believe some of the stuff he says on the air. He claims he went to school at AU, but it was apparently during the Barfield era and its has colored his all of his expectations about us... Well at least 560 still has Max on afterward. Not a bad show except for the shameless self-promotion. They spend 30 minutes a day talking about how great they are and recapping the last 30 minutes. Its like being in 4th grade science class again.

[AUesquire 1]

Believe it or not, I find a lot of similarities in Max Howell and Tim Brando. Every single guest Max has on, he has to make sure he lets them know where all he coached, who he knows, what he's done. The man roomed with my father in law at Troy. Believe me, he ain't all that.

Brando's typical introduction for a guest would be something like...

"I'm happy to have on the coach of the LSU Tigers, Les Miles, who I used to watch all the way back in the days when I started as a radio anchor at FM106 The Game in Witchita Kansas with my co-host and good friend, Harry Carey, who later went on to greatness as the Cubs announcer, and I then moved to KLUW in New Orleans where I did the news, sports and weather all by myself and was adored by many before NBC begged me to call the World Series for a couple of years with my good friend Tim McCarver, whereafter I began calling only the biggest prime time college football games for ABC and people like Keith Jackson looked up to me and asked me for advice until I moved over to the "4 letter network" Ha ha ha and basically handled only the most prestigious of play by play duties and taught Chris Berman how to make really cute and funny names out of the names of baseball players to now, where I'm adored by millions as I work out of my house in Baton Rouge for Fox Sports....

Coach Miles, we only have a minute left...So, do you recall hearing me on the radio in Witchita?