8/23/07 State of the Program
The 2007 season is almost upon us, and I thought I would kick things off by talking about where our program is, and give a brief review of where things have been. As I'm sure all of you know, we enter this season with a new head football coach, Nick Saban. Coach Saban was hired after Mike Shula was fired at the end of last season, after a horribly mismanaged game against Auburn, and a surprising stand by Coach Shula where he refused to make any changes to his staff, despite the obvious incompetence on the offensive side of the ball. He was fired soon after, and there was an immediate backlash against our program from the media. Ironically, this same media voted Shula as the 11th best coach in the conference the year before.
The coaching search took many strange twists and turns. The early hot rumor was that Steve Spurrier was coming as head coach, and he was bringing Bill Oliver as his defensive coordinator. Whether he was ever actually offered the job is up for debate (I personally don't think he was), but he signed a nice extension with South Carolina, and it became obvious he wasn't going to become our next head coach. Next in line was Rich Rodriguez. He was not only offered the job, but he actually accepted. There were mixed emotions in the Alabama community. On one hand, he had certainly done a good job at WVU, and the thought of actually having a real-life college-level offense was certainly intriguing. However, I was personally disappointed for two reasons. First, I wasn't convinced that CRR (Coach Rich Rodriguez) would be able to recruit against the other SEC schools. At WVU, it's easy enough to recruit a couple of good players, put them in a clever scheme, and then line up and win 9-10 games, because you only play 2 or 3 good teams a year. In the SEC, you simply have to recruit better than that (look for my blog on recruiting in the near future). Second, there were strong, reliable rumors that Nick Saban actually had interest in the job. Nick Saban is a dream coach, and the thought that we could have had him if we wouldn't have rushed into the CRR hire made my stomach turn.
And then a miracle occurred; CRR changed his mind. Most Bama fans felt rejected, but I was thrilled, not because CRR wouldn't have been a good coach, but because I knew that suddenly Nick Saban was a real possibility. Yeah, I knew that Saban denied interest in the job, but anyone with any insight into human behavior could tell from his body language and mannerisms that indeed he was interested. Then, on January 3, 2007, the impossible dream came true, and Nick Saban became the head football coach at the University of Alabama.
Since taking the job, the entire climate around the football program has changed. We had 92,000 people at our A-Day game, setting a national record. And recruiting? Holy smoke, has it ever changed! We're now a school that actually gets to choose players that we want, as opposed to getting the players that Florida, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Auburn, and even Ole Miss don't want. Don't get me wrong, those programs are still doing well, but now we're right there with them. Whether we wanted to admit it or not, we were falling farther behind with Shula, but now we're the fastest car on the track, and we're catching up fast.
So now we're starting a new season loaded with offensive talent, new coordinators with sterling reputations, plus a head coach that's known as one of the greatest defensive minds of our time. We should go undefeated, right? Not even close. It takes time to adjust to a new system, especially when it differs so greatly from the previous one. Plus, quite frankly, our talent level just is not on a par with about half of the SEC. I expect us to go 7-5 this year, with an outside chance at 9-3 (to have any chance at 9-3, we'll have to beat either Georgia or Florida State). But don't let another lackluster year get you down; we're coming back. Nick Saban is about as close to a can't miss coach as we could possibly have, and he will bring us back to national prominence. It won't be this year, but it will happen; count on it.
Until next time, Roll Tide!
Kenny
|
|