– Report by Brody Miller, Bruce Feldman and Matt Fortuna
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional reports.
Some observers often thought that there were two groups at the SEC coaches’ meetings – the boys from Nick Saban and others.
“Everyone is kissing Saban’s ass like a big brotherhood,” said a former SEC coach. “During the breaks (between meetings) all the Sabans laugh and joke, as if they were brothers.
Many believed that Jimbo Fisher and Saban had such a dynamic, the master and the apprentice working together to make LSU the national champion in 2003, before Fisher won the championship as head coach in Florida 10 years later and become one of the highest paid coaches in the game. From the outside, there seemed to be a healthy dynamic between two powerful older statesmen in college football.
And then, on Thursday, one of the ugliest public coaching breaks in SEC history erupted, and the reality of that relationship became a little clearer.
“Man, it was crazy to watch this,” said the SEC coach. “Obviously it was something personal right there.”
What he mentions – Fisher called Saban a “narcissist” and said someone should slap the 70-year-old Alabama coach after Saban said on Wednesday that Texas A&M “bought every player on its team” – was a captivating window in the prickly relationship between the most successful coach in the history of college football and one of his protégés.
“There was (friction) all the time,” said an employee who worked with the two coaches at LSU. “Will (Mushamp) and Kirby (Smart) and all the defenders bowed to Nick, but Nick depended a lot on Jimbo. But Nick is so tough on his (offensive coordinators). They’ve always been in each other’s throats. “
Talking to more than a dozen people with knowledge of their relationship over the past two decades, most described it as one of respect – and competition. The two worked together to build winners in the LSU, but constantly opposed the details of the program and the structure of the practice and how to construct the LSU attack around its dominant defense. Fisher was a young rising star coach, frustrated by his demanding boss and trying to break through his own ambitions, and Thursday’s events portrayed a man who still feels humiliated despite his achievements.
“They’re as similar as individuals, they’re both from different areas when they grew up with the whole West Virginia mentality,” said an employee who worked with both coaches at LSU. “It’s the West Virginia super-hardworking thing that lives with them forever. They have the feeling that people are speaking condescendingly to them. And these guys were so competitive with each other. “
Seventeen years later, Fisher’s Texas A&M beat Saban’s Alabama in the regular season and then beat them again for the Class 1 recruitment class nationally. After all these years, sources close to Fisher say he has simply been hurt by Saban’s remarks about the program he is trying to build.
“Oh, it’s not like Nick and Kirby,” said a former LSU coach. “There is no lost love between Nick and Jimbo – at all.”
Every Saturday morning, whether they were in Baton Rouge or Florida, or in a high school parking lot, on their way to meet a rookie, Saban held a mandatory meeting to recruit his assistants. He would bring the old speaker from his office, place it in the center of the table, and anyone who was not present would call.
“It drove Jimbo crazy,” said a senior LSU official.
Saban is a person built on process and details. And some of them didn’t answer Fisher. “Jimbo complained about everything Nick wanted to do,” said one employee.
“Jimbo was complaining about things Nick would say or do, and he always talked about the Bowden family,” said another employee. “Jimbo was great for Bowden and just couldn’t stand what Nick was trying to do.
Fisher played and trained under Terry Bowden in Samford and later followed him to Auburn. He left LSU in 2007 to be Bobby Bowden’s “waiting head coach” at the Florida Hall of Fame.
Saban wanted to hire Fisher from Cincinnati, where the 34-year-old was an offensive coordinator in 1999, before meeting him. Starting in 2000 at LSU, the partnership was a resounding success, with Fisher helping develop Josh Butty, Rohan Davy, Matt Mock and JaMarcus Russell as a quarterback, while Saban’s defenses stole the show.
The tension between the two stems from Fisher’s conviction that Saban’s philosophy limits his crime. Saban is also known as a demanding boss.
Mauk, the 2003 LSU national team defender, recalled many practices in which Fisher ran out on the pitch. Mauk would ask what was wrong, and Fisher would say that Saban had spent all day in a training script and then giving Fisher 10 minutes to write a script for 80 plays. “Sometimes Jimbo didn’t know his place and was upset about how the practice was organized,” said a former employee. Former LSU midfield coach Mike Collins laughs, remembering how Fisher had to give the script to Saban’s attack and then the defense had to run the whole series, knowing the scenario of the attack.
“I can only imagine that if I was his offensive coordinator, you would just feel like an unwanted stepchild,” Mauk said.
This is where the competition came from. Whenever it came to attacking the defense, Fisher did his best to win. He did tricks or corrected outside the purpose of the training.
“Jimbo will try to beat Nick to win the training,” said an official. And Nick would say, “It’s not about that.” We are trying to better prepare for a rival. There is no way they will do it in a game. “
Then there was the crime itself. Saban’s offensive philosophy in those days was to shrink the game, reduce mistakes and allow his defense to win. And Saban loves to manage every little detail. They often agreed on the number of clicks for a certain formation or a certain number of runs, and sometimes Fisher deviated from that. The problem was that Saban could remember exactly what they had to do.
“If that doesn’t happen, you can hear him chirping from behind,” Collins said. “Well, he didn’t tweet. He was barking and growling. ” Because while Saban focused on thinking about the bigger game and the best use of the players, Fisher was trying to prove his abilities.
“Jimbo wanted to play all these fantastic plays,” said an official. Jimbo is an “offensive guru.” … He wanted to show his game book and that was the biggest argument between the two.
Former LSU and Tennessee quarterback Rick Clausen said: “Let’s call it what it was: It was a dominant defense with a solid attack for the most part that was really, really good. And so (Saban) builds his teams. This is how he builds his organizations. And I’m sure that for the offensive coaches, shoot, there were times when we were going to get into a fight and we had certain things, we had certain rules that we had to follow. “
Mauk, who remains close to Fisher, realizes that those years were essential to Fisher, even if he was disappointed: “Jimbo will probably tell you, especially in the beginning, that (he) was something like a squirrel. It looks around and is easily distracted. It was probably a good thing Nick kept the reins back a bit and said, “Hey, be creative, but let’s have a method for madness.”
But many of the same people who pointed out Fisher’s shortcomings in those years were the first to say they loved him. He is a polarizing man in the profession, whom some call “fake” and whom others call one of the “people of the highest character” in business.
“It was fun to be around and after you left the building, you wanted to have fun because Nick was so unhappy there then,” said a former employee. It just carried everyone.
And therein lies the part of this story that is not unique to Fisher. When I asked former employees what Fisher meant when he said in his speech on Thursday, “Just go ask the people who work for him; you will understand exactly what it is about “, many say that he means the demanding lifestyle of working for Saban.
The assistants were supposed to be there before Saban and were expected to be there until he left. It was a constant flurry of recruitment and training, and then they sat in the movie theater after a workout while Saban listed all the things that could be corrected or improved. An assistant coach said his son played football at Baton Rouge High School and saw him play a game and a half.
“Everyone has a lot of respect for him, but that’s why most boys can’t work for him for more than two years,” he said. “Everyone says this nonsense about ‘He only wants to work for two years.’ Bullshit. That’s all you can take. “
When Saban left LSU in 2005 for Miami Dolphins, he tried to bring Fisher with him. While one source says Saban did not actually offer him a coaching role on the field, Fisher decided to stay at LSU as the OC of Les Miles.
But in all the years since they both left LSU, their relationship has not been hostile. At least it never looked that way. In the podcast “All Things Covered” with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden in 2020, Fisher described the extreme organization he learned from Saban and how he was well ahead of the game for players’ mental health efforts. In those SEC games, they always seemed friendly, and when Saban returned from a 13-0 loss at halftime to beat Georgia in the 2017-18 National Championship game, Fisher waited outside Alabama’s locker room to congratulate him.
Then came Wednesday, when Saban said Texas A&M had “bought” its recruitment class and …
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