How the Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud was squashed at SEC spring meetings | Goodbread

The big box was checked at SEC meetings in Miramar Beach, Florida, this week, and it wasn't the pending new scheduling format. There's plenty of time for the league to recognize it's down to one good option on that.

NIL regulation? That's for a different time, in a different room filled with different people, even if it was a major point of discussion among the league's coaches and athletics directors.

No, the key agenda item, not to be found written on any formal itinerary, was to bring an emphatic end to the Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher drama.

Mission accomplished.

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There was never any doubt that Alabama's coach would do what he could to diffuse questions about the flash grenade that was their public exchange about one another's programs last month.

Having already apologized on national radio, Saban wasn't about to rekindle. Fisher, for his part, uttered the phrase "We're moving on" five times in fielding questions about his viciously personal attack on Saban, as if doing so might detach him from ownership of his own words. Unless Fisher at some point backs up his vague indictment of Saban's methods with some facts, or apologizes for it, his May 19 rant accusing Saban of unsavory practices and being a narcissist will stick to him.

But this week, only a cease-fire would do.

Between the two coaches, they brought more water to the microphone than Gulf of Mexico could have provided to douse the fire. The likelihood of the embers re-firing this summer, however slim, lies with the booster club speaking circuit, where coaches in general have been known to be more loose-lipped. That goes double for Fisher, who speaks more from the hip than does Saban.

It will all percolate again in early October, when Texas A&M visits Alabama for what could be the hottest ticket on either schedule.

But in Miramar Beach, the SEC's brand and image were front and center as much as its coaches were. The annual media presence there makes it a public-facing event for the league, albeit on a smaller scale than SEC Media Days. A spat between two of its most prominent coaches isn't good for business, and commissioner Greg Sankey, having already issued two parking tickets in the form of reprimands on this, wasn't about to be placed in the position of writing another.

Lest we forget, in the immediate aftermath of the exchange, outspoken Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin backed out of a radio interview on "The Dan Patrick Show" at the behest of Sankey, who wanted the spotlight on Saban and Fisher dimmed, not brightened. When it comes to public discourse among SEC coaches, Kiffin is to the SEC what former Florida coach Steve Spurrier used to be - the pot stirrer. The fire poker. Provocative, even a little incendiary, yet harmless and fun all at once.

That's good for the league at times because it stokes fan interest. But in Destin, with the SEC logo and not school logos backdropping every press conference, wounds had to appear at least stitched, if not healed.

Scheduling could wait.

This couldn't.

Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: How Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud was squashed at SEC spring meetings