Nick Saban Is The Ultimate Freakshow

Nick Saban won his third BCS title in four years last night, and given the likelihood that he'll reject the idea of sucking in the NFL one more time, he's probably going to win a lot more. He gets the best players and he trains those players better than any other coach possibly could. By the time he's finished, he may very well go down as the greatest coach in the history of college football. And yet, watching him out there, it all seems so fucking pointless.

I can't stop watching this GIF of Saban getting nailed with a Gatorade bath last night. He HATES it. I know getting doused in Gatorade sucks no matter the occasion, but most coaches take the bath and then let out an impish grin. They at least allow themselves a half-second of enjoyment before going back to being soulless autocrats. Saban can't even abide that half-second. I said earlier this year that coaches are freaks. Saban is the King Freak. He's going to win title after title after title, and then he's gonna die of a heart attack. An efficient, well-executed, no-mistakes heart attack. Just like God drew it up.

Saban's ambition appears to have no logical end. The way ambition usually works is that you set a goal, you work hard to achieve that goal, and then you experience the satisfaction of having achieved that goal. Saban appears to bypass that final stage entirely. Saban takes no joy in winning, or anything else he's accomplished. I'm not sure he even likes football; it's more that he's consumed by it. It's always the next game, the next recruiting trip, the next season, etc. He exists in an endless cycle of dying to win, which is what makes him great. I admire the fact that, like most successful people, Saban lives more for the process of his work than the end result. NO GLORY BOY, HE. But honestly, what kind of person wants to live like that? What kind of life are you leading when you marry your wife and tell her she gets to spend a whopping two days a year with you?

Saban is like a corporation that long ago ceased to be a mom-and-pop operation and became an international conglomerate, focused solely on acquiring assets and driving its stock price higher and higher and higher, with no clear ceiling in mind. Nothing but an endless demand for annual growth that won't cease until something catastrophic happens. There's no settling. There's no, "Hey, look at all this money! Let's go snorkeling." Watching Saban win a title is a grim reminder of all the fun shit you have to surgically remove from your life just to coach a team to a title: no vacations, no family time, no looking back, no drankin', no smoking weed, no friends. No life. And if you have nothing else in your life except for winning, then I don't know what winning even means.

Although he did make Notre Dame look like shit. You have to like him for that.