On Texas' Supposed $100 Million Offer to Nick Saban
By Brandon Larrabee Jul 16, 2014, 5:41pm EDT
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Remember back when Nick Saban was going to be offered a boatload of money to go coach football at Texas? And then he didn't take the supposed Brink's truck worth of coaching cash? Well, now Paul Finebaum and Gene Wojciechowski have written a book saying that, in fact, Saban was offered a bunch of money to coach at Texas:
"Texas was dead serious about trying to money-whip Saban," Finebaum and Wojchiechowski [sic] write. "Depending on whom you talk to -- Bama big hitters or Texas big hitters -- the Longhorns were prepared to give Saban somewhere between a $12 and $15 million signing bonus and a salary package worth $100 million (plus performances)."
While it's tempting to quickly dismiss anything that Finebaum says about this, it's not just the quick-talking radio host making the claim. Wojciechowski is actually a credible reporter, and while he's mostly there to ghostwrite the book, his reputation is also a little bit on the line here.
At the same time, it is important to keep a couple of things in mind: First, there is no timetable on the offer. Texas could have offered Nick Saban $5 million a year over 20 years, and it would have been $100 million total. That's not likely; it was probably somewhere closer to $10 million a year for 10 years if it existed. That's still an enormous amount of money, but it's not $100 million a year. And if it was an insane amount of money, like $15 million or $20 million a year, why didn't Saban either take the money or get a similar amount from Alabama?
That's not to say that the story is completely bogus -- there's enough smoke to think that Texas at least made inquiries to Saban's people. But it's advisable to take the story with a massive grain of salt.