Nick vs. Jimbo: Spurrier weighs in

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” – Queen Gertrude, Act 3, Scene 2 of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, who was born a few centuries too early to weigh in on the spat between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher

The difference between being taken seriously and being thought of as a drama queen who protests way too much is found in the won-loss column. Nick Saban is 183-25 with six national championships since he has been at Alabama. Jimbo Fisher is 34-14 since he became the head coach at Texas A&M in 2018 and he doesn’t even have an SEC West Division championship to show for it.

Nick Saban’s unprecedented success at Alabama has earned him the GOAT label. He’s the Greatest Of All Time so we take him seriously when he says what everybody thinks – that the Aggies bought their No. 1 recruiting class. Jimbo, whose greatest claim to fame since he took over in Aggieland is a win over Alabama and a recruiting class that some “experts” are calling “generational,” could have simply said, “We didn’t cheat so I invite Nick and anyone else who thinks we did to put us under the microscope.”

But did he? Noooooo. Instead Jimbo protested too much. He called Nick a “narcissist” and said it’s downright “despicable” that anyone would think that he – “I don’t cheat. I don’t lie.” – would bend a rule or two for the sake of landing seven 5-star recruits to a school that hasn’t won a national championship since 1939 and hasn’t won a conference title since 1998 when the Aggies were members of the Big 12. Lest we forget, Jimbo also got a show cause from the NCAA for recruiting violations in 2018-19.

Say what you want about Nick Saban, but in all the years he’s been a head football coach, whether at Toledo, Michigan State, LSU or Alabama, he’s never been sanctioned by the NCAA. Some might say it’s because Alabama is a sacred cow, much the same way Duke basketball is beyond the NCAA’s reproach, but Alabama football has been on probation a bunch of times, just none of them during the rein of St. Nick.

This is a very serious family feud – family because Jimbo is a prominent branch on the Nick Saban coaching tree – and the only thing missing is Gordon Solie and Mean Gene Okerlund giving us a blow-by-blow account down to the last atomic elbow drop and spinning toe hold. It’s fabulous drama that has transformed the SEC Spring Meetings from ho-hum to can’t miss for every prominent sports writer and broadcaster in the country.

In private, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has to be enjoying the theatrics because the league will dominate the sports news cycle for at least the next two weeks and the October 8 A&M-Alabama matchup in Tuscaloosa is likely to be the most-watched college football game in the last 10-12 years. Publicly, however, Sankey has to do the stiff upper lip thing so he’s put a gag order on all the coaches in the SEC, forbidding them to offer their opinions of this spat to any newspaper or network. Sankey was unable to get the ban in place before Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was able to offer this zinger:

“Did this really happen? First time I can remember being speechless … I haven’t moved from my seat. That should’ve been on Pay-Per-View.”

Lane might be speechless and the rest of the SEC coaches gagged, but fortunately for us, Steve Spurrier still has opinions that he’s happy to share with the civilized world. Spurrier is the kind of coach that if you don’t want to hear his opinion, you’re smart not to ask the question in the first place. He is, after all, the same coach who once responded to word that a fire in the Auburn library had destroyed 20 books with “the real tragedy was 15 hadn’t been colored in yet.”

Spurrier was asked by Mike Griffith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s DawgNation site to offer his take on this feud of Hatfields-McCoys proportions from a couple of former West Virginia hillbillies (Jimbo is from Clarksberg, Nick from Fairmont). Spurrier, Florida’s GOAT and on the short list of the greatest coaches all-time in both the SEC and college football, didn’t disappoint with this 9-inch stiletto to the heart of the matter:

“I don’t know why [Fisher] is mad at Saban. Did Saban say something that wasn’t true?”

If you go back to February, Kiffin essentially said the same thing as Saban only he offered it in a humorous way: “I joked the other day I didn’t know if Texas A&M was going to incur a luxury tax on how much they paid for their signing class.”

When Lane says something like that we tend to laugh. Folks don’t want to take him seriously although he’s turned into a rather fine head football coach. Everybody takes anything Nick says seriously. Can anyone recall something Nick Saban ever said that was remotely funny?

When Lane called out Jimbo, Jimbo got all huffy, stuck his lips out just to prove how pissed off he was, and offered up his pure as the driven snow defense. Probably because it was Lane calling out Jimbo that it was swept under the rug and for all practical purposes forgotten until Nick said this to a gathering in Birmingham Thursday night:

“We were second in recruiting last year, A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player but I don’t know if we’re going to be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it.”

There we go. It’s all about NIL and money and it’s the wild, wild west because there are so few rules although there are rules that are supposed to prevent boosters and collectives from offering cash deals as recruiting inducements. Judging by what Spurrier told Mike Griffith, the Head Ball Coach, he seems to think maybe Jimbo and the Aggies did open up their wallets a teensy bit.

“I don’t think Saban told any lies in there, so I don’t know what he [Fisher] was mad about,” Spurrier told Griffith. “Since [Fisher] beat him last year, I guess he can talk now. He hasn’t beat much of anybody, but he beat Saban last year. But they haven’t won the division or anything since he’s been there.”

Some radio talking heads and more than a few writers have taken shots at Saban for his comments, in some cases offering up a pot calling the kettle black defense of their criticism. Judging by some of the comments, some of these folks seem to think everybody cheats and Jimbo simply beat Nick at his own game. Most of the critics think Nick is threatened by Jimbo and those deep pocket Aggie boosters (God and the Longhorns are the only ones with more money than the Aggies). One 41-38 win and one recruiting class isn’t going to threaten Saban. Maybe if and when Jimbo ever wins the SEC and goes on to win a national championship Nick Saban might feel threatened. Until that happens we can use Dennis Hopper’s immortal line as Deacon in the movie “Waterworld” who said, “There’s two chances that’s going to happen. No way and no how.”

Does Nick buy players? So far, there is absolutely no evidence that he cheats. Rumors? Sure. Evidence? None so far. Nor has there ever been an investigation or sanctions against a program where he was the head coach. The late great comedian Robin Williams once quipped, “Cats are like Baptists. They raise hell all the time, but you can’t catch them at it.” Critics use a similar analogy about Nick Saban but until he gets caught it falls under the category of professional jealousy. Spurrier, who has never incurred the wrath of the NCAA, has sided with Saban and that’s telling.

As for Jimbo Fisher, there is a history with the NCAA, which is why he sounds a lot like Queen Getrude. He protests way too much.