ran across some old articles when he left to come here from MSU and some others. Sunday, December 5, 2000 Spartans' Saban bolts for the bayou BATON ROUGE, La. -- Telling his Michigan State team that he was leaving to become Louisiana State's football coach was the hardest thing he's ever done professionally, Nick Saban said on Tuesday. Hard maybe, lucrative certainly, but perhaps more importantly for an ambitious young coach anxious to build on his reputation, a change that could make him the toast of football-crazy LSU and the terror of the football-driven Southeastern Conference. Nick Saban Saban's deal could open the door for other coaches. It was also a move that cost Saban a trip to the Florida Citrus Bowl. Later Tuesday, Michigan State associate head coach Bobby Williams was named as interim head coach and will coach the Spartans at the bowl game. Williams, in his 10th year as running backs coach for the Spartans, was elevated to the position of associate head coach before the season began. "I liked the challenge of this football program," Saban said of LSU. "I think there is great tradition. I think the Southeastern Conference is a very competitive, outstanding football conference. There's a challenge to being part of that conference that kind of intrigued me." Saban, who earned $697,330 a year at Michigan State, agreed to a five-year rollover contract at LSU with a base salary of $250,000, and will be paid an additional $550,000 for radio, television and internet appearances, plus additional supplemental pay that will bring his total yearly package to $1.2 million a year. "Security is always something that's important to you and to your family," Saban said. "But it's not the reason I came here." Michigan State spokesman Terry Denbow said Michigan State conducted "absolutely no bidding war" in order to keep Saban. "This was an opportunity for Nick and his family, both professional and personal, and we wish him the best of luck at LSU," Denbow said. Saban said he had two firm offers to leave Michigan State previously, for the NFL's New York Giants and the Indianapolis Colts, but was not interested in moving until LSU came calling. The school is in the midst of a major building program that will add 11,000 seats, including 70 new suites, at Tiger Stadium, boosting stadium capacity to 91,700. The stadium will be the fourth-largest on-campus stadium in the nation and Saban is tied with two other coaches as the third-highest paid coach. More importantly, he said, he will be at the No. 1 program in the state. "At Michigan State we were never No. 1," Saban said. "That was always Michigan. It was always UM this or that. If I'd gone to Ohio it would have been Ohio State, Indiana it's Purdue, Chicago it's every other school in the Big Ten. In the east it's Penn State. Wherever you go you're looking at someone else when you're recruiting, trying to catch up, trying to convince someone you're up there." Saban was at Michigan State for 10 years, first as the defensive coordinator and for the past five years as the head coach. He has a 43-26-1 record as a college coach and a 34-24-1 record at Michigan State. This year Saban guided No. 10 Michigan State to a 9-2 record, a second-place finish in the Big Ten and a Citrus Bowl berth -- the Spartans' first Jan. 1 game since the Gator Bowl in 1989. "Everywhere I turned his name kept coming up," LSU athletics director Joe Dean said of Saban's selection. "He's a high-visibility guy from a good program who had a great season. I think what we saw there is what we'll see here but to the next level." Saban has both college and NFL experience. "I like college football, and I like college football because when I talked to my team today, the effect that you have on some of the players, their lives, means something," Saban said, tears in his eyes, voice shaking. "That's why I like college football." LSU finished this season 3-8, their second straight losing record. Gerry DiNardo was fired with one game remaining. There were other problems for LSU as well -- players arrested, players suspended, players quitting the team. "This is the players' team," Saban said. "I'm the coach and I want the players to take some responsibility and ownership for all the areas that are important in building the team. How they play is just one of those areas." Saban planned to stay in Louisiana for at least a day or two. He hoped to meet with the assistant coaches left over from the DiNardo era and the team. Saban was not sure if he would bring Michigan State assistants with him or retain any of the present staff. He said Morris Watts, the present offensive coordinator at Michigan State who previously held that position under DiNardo, would be considered to possibly return to LSU. Nick Saban, speaking to LSU fans, has seemed to fit in well in his new surroundings. Football Saban embraces life as LSU's coach By Lynn Henning / The Detroit News Image Associated Press Nick Saban left MSU to coach Louisiana State after the 1998 regular season. Image Associated Press Nick Saban, who has led LSU to 26 victories in three seasons, talked with quarterback Marcus Randall during the spring game. Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery BATON ROUGE, La. -- Nick Saban remembers that day in downtown Baton Rouge, at a luncheon attended by 600-700 women known as the Bengal Belles. A grandmotherly person raised her hand and shot a question at Louisiana State's football coach: "Are we gonna get up in their faces and play bump-and-run," she demanded to know, "or are we just gonna lay back and play more of that soft zone?" Saban has learned volumes in the four years since he left Michigan State to begin reshaping an underachieving college football heavyweight begging for a whip-cracker. But what he might find most fascinating at LSU is the French-oriented culture that is a realm removed from what he knew during 25 years coaching primarily in the North. Saban has found friends, fans and football players to be in as much surplus in Louisiana as the state's sprawling magnolia trees. LSU, in turn, has snared what it had been aching for for so many years: A coach who could win football games steadily and craft a premier program as feared as Florida, Alabama, Auburn or any other Southeastern Conference power. Building Saban has a chance this season to become the first LSU coach since Charlie McClendon during the 1960s and '70s to have four consecutive winning seasons. LSU was in miserable shape (3-8 in 1999) when he arrived. Saban has since taken the Tigers to three consecutive bowl games and records of 8-4, 10-3, and 8-5. Last winter, Saban had what various analysts ranked as the nation's No. 1 recruiting class. This fall, LSU could find itself favored in all 12 regular-season games. Factor in the 25-acre spread and garden-flanked French provincial home in which he and his family live three miles from LSU, and it figures why natives have a pet phrase for the Saban-Louisiana matchup: "C'est si bon." Or, as billboards cheering Saban state, playfully: "C'est Sa-ban." "People kind of celebrate life here," Saban was saying last week, sitting in his nicely furnished office. "You've got all these interesting factions as part of this unique culture: Creole Louisianans in the south. Lots of French-speaking folks around New Orleans. Acadians in Lafayette. Up around Lake Charles, it's a lot like Texas. "The people here are really good people. Hardworking. Down to earth." Another skill, Saban has discovered, prevails. "People cook here," he said. "Everybody can cook. The food may be a little fattening, but it's just one of the ways they love life." If Saban has been chowing down on jambalaya and bread pudding, he doesn't show it. He is lean as ever and there's nary a gray hair on the head of the man who will turn 52 on Oct. 31. His allies, it seems, are everywhere. University executives, students, players, fans, media. LSU wanted a football coach who could win with style and command. That would appear to be what LSU is savoring in Saban. "Fans love him," said Scott Rabalais, a writer and columnist who covers LSU football for the Baton Rouge Advocate. "In Louisiana, the top people are the governor, LSU's football coach and the (New Orleans) Saints football coach -- maybe. Nick's sort of taken the bully pulpit with this job and it's worked well." Football frenzy On a sultry late afternoon in June, Rabalais was standing outside the LSU athletic administration building where, joined by 15 other media members, he had just finished quizzing Saban during a 45-minute news conference. Consider it one example of how football life differs in the Deep South. At Michigan or Michigan State, football news conferences in June don't happen. But college football reigns year-round at a school such as LSU, where last week Saban's every word was devoured as he discussed the Tigers' need for a hard-hitting safety and more depth at linebacker. He also casually jabbed the media for not doing more to promote LSU's need -- and early promise to him -- for a new football office and training complex that so far hasn't been built but is somewhere in the works. Carl Dubois, another writer who covers LSU for the Advocate, said Saban has status and clout all because LSU likes success -- and likes the way this coach, in particular, has engineered it. "Primarily, what he did early here was win big games against marquee teams that convinced people he was heading in the right direction," Dubois said. "People see a systematic approach, grounded in the NFL and at colleges where he was a head coach before. "He has a no-nonsense, businesslike style that people haven't seen here before." LSU's chancellor, Mark Emmert, is perhaps Saban's most important booster, a development that differs markedly from the prickly relationship Saban maintained with Michigan State President M. Peter McPherson. "He has fit in remarkably well here," Emmert said during a telephone interview. "I was enormously confident when I hired Nick that he would be a good fit for the community. And I'm pleased that while he is recognized as a first-rate football coach and football mind, more importantly, he has also been someone who has resonated with the citizens of Louisiana, and with the Tigers faithful all over the United States." Better fit The harmony between Emmert and his football coach stands as the biggest difference in Saban's life since he came to Baton Rouge from Michigan State. Tension between McPherson and Saban, which had been building for years, convinced Saban in November 1999 to abandon a Michigan State job that he had always said, and maintains today, he never wanted to leave. "I love that school like I love my own alma mater (Kent State)," Saban said. "I root for Michigan State every week. I always will." Saban's chore at LSU was similar to what he inherited at Michigan State. A 4-7 season ended the coaching career of George Perles. Gerry DiNardo, now the head coach at Indiana, had just been booted by LSU in the autumn of 1999 following back-to-back bleak seasons, the sort that had been cropping up far too frequently since the Tigers' glory days. Whether Michigan State's camp agreed with it or not, Saban had a reputation as one of football's best and brightest coaches. He was buttoned-down and intense. He had a clean slate. He had taken over a Michigan State program in 1994 that was tattered and that a year later would be hit with NCAA probation (misdeeds during Perles' era, although Perles was exonerated). He had taken the Spartans to four six-victory seasons ahead of 1998's breakthrough, a 9-2 record and a destined victory over Florida in the Citrus Bowl. NFL teams were always sticking Saban's name somewhere on their short lists. Now it was a college program with Top 25 potential that zeroed in on a 48-year-old coach whose relationship with his boss was going nowhere. LSU offered Saban $1.2 million compared with a Michigan State salary closer to $750,000. McPherson resisted any serious boosts, hardly concealing his ire toward Saban. Saban left for Baton Rouge before the bowl game, and for a job many thought was likely to be trouble for a northern-oriented man now working against coaches steeped in success and knowing their way around the South. "When I went to Michigan State, I knew how the components worked, mostly because George had given me responsibilities that helped prepare me to be a head coach," said Saban, who, during his first stint at Michigan State, had been Perles' defensive coordinator on the 1987 Rose Bowl team. "Then when I came here, I tried to implement the same program. "I was just so unfamiliar with the landscape. Fortunately, there were some good football players here who simply had been psychologically beaten down. They responded, and we had some success." Saban also began doing what LSU hadn't been doing for years: cleaning up on Louisiana's high school talent. No longer would Florida and Texas and Alabama and others pirate the state's best. Saban and LSU have been locking up the locals, and Louisiana annually has an overflow batch of blue-chippers. Days ahead There are no hints this summer that anything is amiss, no suggestions that Saban and LSU are enjoying anything less than a thriving romance. The NFL probably will call on him again at some point. But for now, Saban is content. Entirely so. "I feel appreciated relative to what we've been able to bring to this program," he said. He had opposite feelings during his waning days at Michigan State. And it was so ironic. Michigan State was the job Saban had always wanted, the school and the town he had always thought best for him and for his family. Now he belongs to LSU. And with about as much ease as shrimp find their way into something succulent on the Tigers' fans dinner tables, Saban seems likewise to have found a fit. Future looks bright for Saban despite LSU's rough past By SCOTT RABALAIS [email protected] Advocate sportswriter Unlike a lot of coaches who build houses when they land in a new town to take a new job, Nick Saban bought a home for his family. The first was a castle-like residence tucked at the back of a pricey subdivision off Highland Road. The second is a big yellow mansion on Highland not far south of the LSU campus. But Nick Saban does like to build things. Football programs are his forte, all things considered more difficult things to assemble. Even more difficult to hold together. "When I'm playing gin rummy or poker, I always look at the cards and say, 'How am I going to build a hand?'" Saban said. "I don't think about whether I've got good cards or bad cards. It's what is the best strategy for me to build a hand." Right off the top of the deck it looks like Saban has a pretty good hand as he enters his fourth season at LSU. Two of Saban's last three recruiting classes have been ranked in the top three nationally, and 15 starters are back from the team that went 8-5 and made it to the Cotton Bowl despite a slew of injuries and the departure of free safety Damien James. All-American linebacker Bradie James, LSU's top two tailbacks (LaBrandon Toefield and Domanick Davis) and the Tigers' long-time place-kicker John Corbello have also left the stage. LSU/SEC/NATIONAL # Future bright for Saban, LSU # Clayton does it all for Tigers # Offense draws line with massive front # LSU defense looks to adjust attitude # Auburn favored to win West # Tennessee seeks SEC title # Sugar gets national title game # Rabalais: 'Sabanball' smash hit at LSU # King: SEC team could win national title # SEC team capsules: East | West # Complete 2003 LSU football roster Saban has spent much of his summer spinning the story of legendary horse Seabiscuit and how he stared down Triple Crown winner War Admiral in their famous 1938 match race. He is optimistic that this LSU team can be like the little horse that could. "The most important thing in the race was getting him to where Seabiscuit could see that other horse in the eye," Saban said. "Obviously the horse had ability, but character and attitude also make you a champion. Hopefully our team has showed that to this point and will have success down the road. "It doesn't mean it's going to be a perfect season. Absolutely not. There are going to be tough times, disappointment and adversity to overcome. But how these players do that to a large degree will determine if we have success. It's important not only how you handle failure but success. We will face both challenges during the course of the season." After seasons of 8-4, 10-3 and 8-5, Saban is entering territory where a host of coaches before him have known success, then failure. No LSU coach has had four consecutive winning seasons since the late Charles McClendon finished his 18-year career with marks of 7-3-1, 8-4, 8-4 and 7-5 from 1976-79. Since then, the fourth year has proven to be disaster, not the charm for the four LSU coaches who have lasted that long. # Jerry Stovall went 4-7 in 1983 and was fired the year after being named national coach of the year. # Mike Archer went from 10-1-1 in 1987 and 8-4 in 1988 with a share of the Southeastern Conference championship to 4-7 and 5-6 and was dismissed. # Curley Hallman never won in any of his four seasons at LSU and was gone after going 4-7 in 1994. Then there was Gerry DiNardo, whose first three seasons at LSU most closely resembles that of his successor. DiNardo went 26-9-1 with three bowl victories and two shares of the SEC Western Division title. But DiNardo won only six of his next 21 games and was fired with one to go in 1999. DiNardo's program got away from him. Saban is all about the control, and determined that the LSU program will not befall the same fate on his watch. "I'm a perfectionist," Saban said. "To say I'm satisfied in any shape or form, I can't. "As a coach you want to win every game, see every guy graduate and never have a problem. And every time you feel like you get there, something happens to make you realize you're not as far along as you thought you were. You have to accept it. It's not something that has a beginning and a middle and an end because in college the team is always changing. That's why you try to create a chemistry and atmosphere to help you be successful." LSU is expected to have that chemistry on offense. Though the Tigers lost Toefield and Davis to the NFL, sophomore Joseph Addai leads a corps of talented if mostly unproven tailbacks that include Seabiscuit jockey-sized Shyrone Carey and freshmen Alley Broussard, Justin Vincent and Barrington Edwards. They will run behind an offensive line that has both talent and cohesiveness. Senior right guard Stephen Peterman is a preseason All-American, junior center Ben Wilkerson is preseason All-SEC, and sophomore left tackle Andrew Whitworth is a future star. The receiving corps is also deep, led by perhaps the most talented player in the SEC, junior Michael Clayton. When he isn't catching passes, Clayton is also LSU's best safety, and can be expected to play 10-15 snaps per game on that side of the ball. That means Clayton won't be able to make every catch, but he won't have to. LSU's quarterbacks will also be able to throw to Devery Henderson, Skyler Green, Bennie Brazell and freshman Dwayne Bowe. "Only four receivers can get on the field at one time," junior quarterback Matt Mauck said. "It'll be tough to find the four, they're all so talented. It's going to be a good battle. "Competition is what's good on a football team. It shows how good your program is getting." Mauck, who was lost for the second half of last season with a foot injury, returned in the spring and wrenched the starting job away from Marcus Randall. Randall has kept up the pressure in preseason practices, as has freshman phenom JaMarcus Russell. When LSU's offensive linemen looks across the line of scrimmage in practice, the men on the other side don't blink. The Tigers welcome back three of their front four, led by preseason All-SEC pick Chad Lavalais at tackle. They will have to protect a linebacker corps that has been unsettled much of August. Junior Lionel Turner is entrenched at middle linebacker but the other spots have been revolving doors, especially with senior Adrian Mayes bouncing between weakside linebacker and free safety. LSU's cornerback spots are in the experienced hands of senior Randall Gay and All-SEC pick Corey Webster. Senior Jack Hunt has bulked up to play strong safety, but the Tigers searched hard to give him a running mate. Saban has charged his players to be champions this year, and the schedule gives the Tigers a chance to be a championship team. The nonconference slate is not particularly daunting and most of LSU's toughest SEC contests -- Georgia, Florida, Auburn and Arkansas -- are at home. Saban isn't promising a second SEC title to go with the one his Tigers captured in 2001, but he's building toward one. Always building. "It's easy to identify a lot of good football teams in our league this year," Saban said. "It's not easy to identify a dominant team. "The team with heart and character that is hungry and can persevere has a chance to be successful in the end." LSU's Saban emerges in the nick of time Sunday December 28, 2003 Peter Finney Gerry DiNardo had been fired as LSU's football coach about 10 days earlier, and there he was that evening in November 1999, sitting at a corner table at a restaurant in Baton Rouge bearing his name. Between some story-telling, between sips from a glass of red wine, DiNardo occasionally would look up and steal a peek at Monday Night Football. The Patriots were playing the Jets, and it so happened the highlight for losing New England was a kickoff return by Kevin Faulk, the kind of explosive burst that had once ignited magic inside Tiger Stadium. Advertisement Faulk was not only the first player DiNardo recruited, he was a freshman member of the 1995 Tigers who hung a 45-26 Independence Bowl whipping on a Michigan State team coached by the man who would be DiNardo's successor. Obviously, on that night DiNardo had no idea he'd be replaced by Nick Saban. The funny thing is it so easily could've been not Nick Saban. The coach of the Spartans did not appear on LSU's radar screen until a search committee had interviewed Butch Davis, then coach of the Miami Hurricanes, and Minnesota coach Glen Mason, along with taking a serious look at Dennis Erickson, then at Washington State. Davis was impressive. He also leveled. "I'm thinking more NFL," said the man who would leave the Hurricanes for the Cleveland Browns. As for Mason, he insisted on a hush-hush meeting in Chicago. Following the interview, the committee was returning to Baton Rouge when a phone call informed them the story was out. "I think Coach Mason used LSU," said a committee member. All this happened the week after Houston handed LSU its eighth consecutive loss, leading to DiNardo's firing two days later. It would be another 11 days before LSU closed out the regular season against Arkansas in a Friday game at Tiger Stadium. On the Wednesday before that season finale, LSU athletic director Joe Dean got a call from Sean Tuohy, who played basketball at Newman School and Ole Miss, who also happened to be in business (Taco Bell) in Memphis with Jimmy Sexton, who happened to be Nick Saban's agent. Whereupon, the ball started rolling. Fast. On Saturday, the day after the Tigers upset the 17th-ranked Razorbacks 35-10 under an interim coach, the search committee was sitting in Sexton's Memphis home with the Michigan State coach at Sexton's side. "Nick showed up with a legal pad full of questions," recalled Stan Jacobs, a member of the committee. "He looked over at Joe and the first words out of his mouth were: 'Morris Watts tells me you'd be a good man to work for.' Then he says, 'Morris tells me LSU is a sleeping giant.' " Watts had been at LSU, on the staffs of Jerry Stovall and DiNardo, and it was Watts, Saban's offensive coordinator, who suggested that Saban, then enjoying a season that would end 9-2, should investigate the opening in Baton Rouge. "For more than three hours," Jacobs said, "there were questions, back and forth. For the most part, Nick interviewed the committee. He wanted to know why, with Louisiana such a rich recruiting territory, LSU hadn't been able to become a national contender on a consistent basis. He wanted to know why LSU wasn't able to find and keep the 'right' man. Joe reminded him how many years it took Florida to 'find' Steve Spurrier. Nick got into facilities, academics, all kinds of details. He made it clear, given the positives at LSU, he could build a program to compete for an SEC championship within four years and for a national championship shortly thereafter." Finally, after one brief period of silence, Chancellor Mark Emmert spoke up. Looking straight at Saban, Emmert said: "We want you to be LSU's next football coach." "There were no timeouts by the committee, no consultations," Jacobs recalled. "It was spontaneous. And, coming like it did, Mark may have caught Nick by surprise." On the flight home, Emmert told his athletic director: "Joe, when you talk to Jimmy Sexton, don't negotiate. Just ask him to name his price. What will it take?" It wound up taking $1.2 million. Which turned out to be no small problem, not with an LSU football team coming off a 3-8 season, not when the school was asking from $35,000 to $95,000 for the 72 suites going up in a 92,000-seat stadium. By Saturday night, Saban was back in East Lansing, mulling the pros and cons with wife Terry. On Monday, Terry was in Baton Rouge, secretly and alone, getting a feel for Tigertown. During lunch at TJ Ribs, accompanied by Emmert's wife, Terry Saban added the name of her husband to a blackboard listing prospective candidates. On Monday night, she was back in East Lansing, talking through the night on another family move. On Tuesday, Nick Saban, accompanied by Sexton, was in Tigertown for the announcement. After the press conference, everything was back to normal. Sexton and LSU officials stayed to work out the details on a contract. Saban left to start recruiting. . . . . . . . I miss our coach already and he's still here. Don't fail us, Skipper.
