saban Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Auburn keeping Bryan Harsin, this should totally work out well
For better or for worse, Auburn is saving themselves from throwing $18 million down the drain (for now), announcing Friday that Bryan Harsin will remain the Tigers’ head football coach into the 2022 season. Harsin has had quite the week, one that started out by trending on Twitter for having an affa...

A Matt Stafford victory is a win for all mid-career professionals
During the summer of 2006, I was a fledgling student journalist baking under the blistering sun at a preseason practice at UGA, capturing B-Roll of a fellow pimply-faced true freshman from Texas. The quarterback phenom was about to be the talk of the SEC. Matthew Stafford’s singular talent created r...

I know just the coach for Auburn
The writing is on the wall for Bryan Harsin at Auburn, to the point where Paul Finebaum is openly speculating about Hugh Freeze coming in from Liberty — after five years of SEC exile — to take the Tigers job....

Auburn's winter of discontent
Most Power Five Conference college football programs take as much of a deep breath as they can after the traditional National Signing Day, taking place the first Wednesday of every February. Teams’ rosters are as set as possible in the transfer-portal era of the sport after inking the final parts of...

Lane Kiffin feels very sorry for himself
Cue up the world’s tiniest violin — Lane Kiffin had the latest anti-NIL take yesterday. He was up in arms at Ole Miss’ signing day press conference earlier today about Jimbo Fisher having the top incoming recruiting class, saying “We don’t have the funding resources as some schools with the NIL deal...

Brian Kelly dances down the recruiting trail
Danny Lewis, a tight end from New Iberia, La., had been ticketed for Cincinnati, but decommitted from the Bearcats earlier this month. Reopening his recruiting process, Lewis visited Alabama last week, and got some photos of himself all decked out in a Crimson Tide uniform. Neat! Seems like a fun ti...

Nick Saban speaks up for the right to vote (kinda)
There is no shortage of examples of athletes using their public platforms to elevate social justice causes, from the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics to the Black Lives Matter marches led by collegiate athletes in the summer of 2020, and the countless moments in between. Multiple athletes in ...

Death, taxes, and Kirk Ferentz
Speculation about Kirk Ferentz retiring from coaching has been going on since the Obama Administration, when Iowa inked its longtime head man to an extension through 2025. Even with the caveat that it was “a few years off,” we’ve seen ideas tossed out for who might eventually take the helm in Iowa C...

God help me, but I’m starting to hate Nick Saban less
Nick Saban has somehow made a remarkable transformation from one of the most hated men in American sports to a begrudgingly respected and liked — if perhaps not yet universally beloved — figure. How is it even possible to make that sort of shift while remaining the coach of a team that has kept on u...

Three straight deep shots with a national championship on the line? Explain yourself
Up until the final minute, last night’s college football national championship saw Alabama and Georgia within one score of one another for the entirety of the game. Even when Brock Bowers waltzed into the endzone with 3:33 left on the clock, the extra point only made it an eight-point game....

Nick Saban and Kirby Smart are totally concerned about the little guy
The NIL contracts for “student-athletes” have been an overwhelming success, according to many people, including us. They give an unpaid workforce access to a revenue stream, make for great stories when used right, and end this ruse that college athletics should be an altruistic endeavor because kids...

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: With Alabama and Georgia set to play in national championship game again, let's look back at the players from four years ago... then and now
It’s been four years since that classic national championship between Georgia and Alabama. A lot has changed in that full recruiting cycle since true freshman Tua Tagovailoa threw that 41-yard game-winning touchdown pass to true freshman DeVonta Smith in overtime after taking a 16-yard sack the prev...

Longtime underdog Alabama set to take on perennial powerhouse Cincinnati in CFP
After his comments yesterday, I have to wonder whether Alabama linebacker Will Anderson has considered a career in comedy. I mean, only if this whole football thing doesn’t work out for him. It’s only the Crimson Tide he plays for, after all, so I wouldn’t really be putting all my eggs in one basket...

Let's hope Cincinnati and UGA follow Michigan’s and Alabama's lead so we can have a College Football Playoff
Since the decimation of the BCS – which worked – the College Football Playoff has turned bowl season into a snooze fest besides a few scattered matchups outside of the three games that will determine a national champion. And in a year in which half the field is making their debut in the Final 4 in t...

The Coach Prime Predicament: Why Deion Sanders’ success at Jackson State is a slippery slope for HBCUs
Being a controversial figure that evicts strong emotions on both sides of the coin is what Deion Sanders has always been the best at — outside of shutting down your favorite wide receiver. From his playing days to his past and current job as a coach/leader of young athletes, Sanders’ resume shows a ...

Will Urban Meyer get a shot at redemption? Let's look at how other coaches bounced back after failing miserably
Urban Meyer is out as coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars after going 2-11 in his only partial season at the helm. While that’s 13 more games than Meyer ever should have coached in the NFL, and he leaves with a lower winning percentage in the league (.154) than Marty Mornhinweg (.156), it somehow does...

It's the end of Urban we’d all hoped for
Most of the time, the things you think will go badly don’t go badly in the way you hope. We all have an urge to watch something burn, if only for a short time, but rarely do we get the flaming wreckage we seek. A lot of times we get the conclusion, but not the show in between....

Adam Sandler’s production company is inexplicably making a movie about Sean Payton, starring Kevin James
Hands up, everyone: who out there was asking for a Sean Payton biopic? ...

Sorry Vegas, but there’s no way Jim Harbaugh or Nick Saban goes to the NFL
NFL teams have been looking at college coaches to fill their head coaching vacancies more than ever. In each of the past three seasons, at least one coach made the jump to the NFL after years of working at the collegiate level. Urban Meyer is the most recent college coach to take that route, and alt...

The Miami Hurricanes and Chicago Bulls have put the pedal to the metal, but don’t expect them to be what they were in the past
The young, promising Chicago Bulls are in second place in the Eastern Conference, and the Miami Hurricanes have high hopes after hiring a new football coach — it’s like it’s 1989 all over again. Fans of both teams have great reason to be excited....