Bohls: Alabama's Nick Saban loves Sark as much as he does beating former assistants

ATLANTA — Nick Saban had a down year last season.

Not only did Alabama fail to win a national championship, he lost not once, but twice to former assistant coaches in the same season.

It of course means more in the SEC, and Saban’s probably ticked off more.

Although the best coach in college football history said Tuesday at SEC media days that he himself wasn’t surprised and “sort of expected” the eventual losses to coaches who once called him boss, the rest of the nation’s collective jaws dropped.

Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, a former offensive coordinator under Saban at LSU and the newest thorn in Saban’s side, became the first Nick disciple to ever beat his former boss after 24 consecutive losses by one-time Saban assistants to the, ahem, czar of college football.

Then, after Saban got the best of his defensive guru, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, in the SEC championship game, the pupil turned the tables on him in the College Football Playoff championship game and denied Saban a seventh national title.

Hey, Steve Sarkisian, are you taking notes?

We know he is.

It’d be nice to say Fisher and Smart gave the Texas head coach and former Saban offensive coordinator the perfect and revolutionary blueprint for beating Alabama because Sark could use one in Week Two when the Crimson Tide and the Longhorns meet for the first time since the devastating 2009 national championship game that injury-shackled Texas lost.

Smart found the perfect antidote to Alabama’s supremacy. He built a generational defense with nine players drafted off that unit this spring.

Fisher found the perfect time to upset Alabama. His Aggies were coming off back-to-back losses to Arkansas and Mississippi State and had a less than impressive quarterback in Zach Calzada, who was so lightly regarded by his own team that he transferred to Auburn in the offseason without a murmur. A kickoff return for a touchdown and a walk-off winning field goal got the job done versus the Tide.

Some blueprint.

It’d be easier to copy Saban’s lifestyle. The normally serious coach showed his lighter side Tuesday when he said people have no idea of “how well I clean house. I get a list every day after I played golf. I do the sweeping, clean the fridge. Nobody knows how well I do those things.”

As for trying to duplicate what Fisher and Smart pulled off, good luck, Sark. It’ll take the whole kitchen sink.

Texas won’t have that same crushing defense as Georgia's. The Longhorns have one defensive player, linebacker DeMarvion Overshown, on the preseason All-Big 12 team.

But Texas may have timing in its favor since it’s coming off a disturbing 5-7 season and may not command the Tide’s full attention although it will Saban’s.

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When I asked if Saban has extra bounce in his step on game weeks against his former pupils, Sarkisian said, “I don’t know if he ups his game. First of all, he’s a very smart man. He doesn’t forget anything from a practice or a scrimmage. He doesn’t forget a conversation.”

Don’t Jimbo know it.

But it goes beyond wanting revenge for a caustic comment like the A&M head coach made in May in a furor over an NIL dispute and Saban's remarks that the Aggies literally bought the No. 1 recruiting class in history. The two may not have kissed and made up, but Saban said Tuesday, “I have no issues or problems with Jimbo. He’s done a great job for A&M and did a great job for us.”

Whatever.

On Sark, however, Saban has a positively man crush of a relationship with the Longhorns coach, a relationship that seems totally genuine.

“Sark is one of the finest coaches we’ve ever had on staff,” Saban said. "He did an outstanding job. He’s a very good play-caller on game day, he’s well organized. He just did a fantastic job. I can’t say enough good things about Sark and what he did for our program and the job he’ll do for Texas.”

Not that any of that mutual respect and affection will carry over into the game on the field.

Sark promises that Saban’s vast memory goes way beyond that.

“Maybe a defensive staffer said once this or that would be a problem for Alabama,” Sarkisian said. “Well, guess what? He remembers (about the strategy to counter that) and he goes and does that. I’ve always appreciated that. He’s very coy about his approach. He’s a sly fox in the way he goes about his business.”

Being sly but also having probably the best talent of any team in the nation can be a lethal combination.

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In truth, there is no remedy against the best coach ever and a Bama team that returns the most starters (12) since 2013 and sports the best two players of last season in Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young and Heisman contender Will Anderson.

Young, too, is enamored with Sark, the coach who recruited the quarterback to Alabama.

“Sark was very instrumental with me going to Alabama,” Young said. “I’ve got a lot of love for Sark, and we have a tremendous amount of respect for Texas as a team.”

Having worked under Saban for three years has to help Sark, but it may not be the advantage some might think.

It doesn’t really seem to matter that Saban’s former assistants know all the intricacies and details of the Alabama system because he knows their personalities and patterns just as well or better. Couple that with the fact Saban almost always has more talented players and a deeper roster, and the task of beating him is akin to solving climate change.

Know that Alabama has had an eye-popping 113 players drafted by NFL teams over the last 14 years, 41 of them first-rounders. Remember that Saban has a sterling 25-2 record against nine former assistants and coordinators who became head coaches. Don’t forget that in his 15 seasons in Tuscaloosa, he has lost eight home games and won 95.

Monumental challenge doesn’t begin to adequately describe the chore facing the Longhorns. Alabama will have a terrific secondary and linebacking crew and a new running back on loan from Georgia Tech (Jahmyr Gibbs) and wide receiver transfers from Georgia (Jermaine Burton) and Louisville (Tyler Harrell) as well as a cornerback transfer from LSU (Eli Ricks).

More:Incoming UT transfer Garret Guillemette catches a no-hitter on same day of Texas commitment

Saban seems laser-focused when he plays one of his former assistants as if to suggest losing to one of them would be an affront to everything he stands for. In fact, it serves as further proof that competing against him remains a measuring stick by which many coaches are judged.

Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin is 0-2 against Saban, for whom he once called offensive plays, but couldn’t resist a very small needle. He couldn’t help himself Monday after his introductory remarks when a reporter asked him about trick plays when he was at Alabama.

“Kirby Smart used to say sometimes you come up here and just start talking about Alabama,” Kiffin said. “So our first question somehow is about Nick Saban, so … that’s pretty usual.”

As for those gadget plays, Kiffin said, “If they worked, he was happy. If they didn’t work, you got ass chewings.”

The conversation usually does trend toward Saban, but so do the wins. And he’s very unhappy with poor execution.

That said, Saban expressed immense pride in his sprawling coaching tree that also includes Will Muschamp, Jeremy Pruitt and both the old and new Florida coach in Jim McElwain and Billy Napier.

“I would doubt there’s ever been a coach in any sport, college or professional, that has so many people under him that are at major jobs,” Kiffin said. “You’re talking about Top 25 jobs. It really is amazing not just for someone to produce coaches that people hire, but for those to have success and be at major places speaks volumes of how phenomenal a coach he is.”

Kiffin added the nuance that Saban’s former defensive aides may take more than those on the offensive side because the former “basically take everything and move it there (to their new job) because that’s a big part about Alabama’s program. The defense is the same and it hasn’t changed for the most part.”

As for offensive coaches like himself, Sark and Napier, they might deviate a bit more even though they try to push the same discipline and organization and attention to detail.

“I think the offensive coaches — whoever Billy (Napier) or Sark — they usually have their own offensive flair they end up running.”

Flair alone, however, probably won’t get it done.

If any other former Saban disciples hope to crack the code, they’d better recruit like Nick, develop talent like Nick and, well, be Nick.

That’s the real blueprint.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas-Alabama game to pit Saban against his former assistant Sarkisian