Last Night's Winner: Joyless Robot Prigs

In sports, everyone is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like Nick Saban, recipient of history's unhappiest Gatorade bath, a coach who won a national championship but would probably fail a Turing test.

Actual headline on a Birmingham TV station's blog: "Nick Saban enjoys Gatorade bath." It's always a shock to find a sliver of identifiable humanity in so unexpected an source, so I suppose "Nick Saban enjoy Gatorade bath" is up there in news value with "Elephant paints self-portrait" or "Computer becomes self-aware." But this certainly doesn't look like enjoyment:

And this certainly doesn't sound like enjoyment:

"I'm a lot happier with the bath than I would have been if I didn't get one," Saban said. "It's part of it, and I was happy to see the players be so happy and excited. I think they always enjoy dumping on the coach."

Saban did say he wished they would do water instead of Gatorade.

"I wish they'd do the water," Saban said. "The Gatorade is awful sticky."

So this makes it back-to-back national championships for the joyless, frowny, very very serious Football Coaching Inc. set. Good for them. Congrats to Alabama and its players, congrats to its fans, congrats to whoever programmed Nick Saban, and congrats especially to the other, as-yet-unnamed football team with which Nick Saban commences his inevitable flirtation next month.

Nick Saban enjoys Gatorade bath [WBRC-TV] Winning Championship, Alabama Returns to Top [New York Times]