CECIL HURT: No one questioning Nick Saban on latest hire

Friday afternoon's announcement that Steve Sarkisian would replace Lane Kiffin as Alabama football's offensive coordinator when the Crimson Tide season comes to an end didn't cause a tremendous stir around the nation, perhaps not as much as might have been expected.

There's a reason for the silent night: Nick Saban.

No one doubts Sarkisian's qualifications. He's coached very good offenses wherever he has been as a coordinator or a head coach. However, his departure from his previous job as the head coach at Southern Cal - the same spot from which Kiffin came to Tuscaloosa - was even more tumultuous than Kiffin's. Personality issues or not, Kiffin was dismissed from USC because he didn't win enough football games. That wasn't Sarkisian's problem, not at Washington (Alabama's upcoming playoff opponent because the world is, after all, a very small ball in a big universe) or at USC. His problems were related to alcohol, something Sarkisian has acknowledged and a condition for which he was seeking help even before Nick Saban called in September. We are spilling no secrets here and passing no judgment.

For a few people at the time, and for many more in retrospect, one can see Saban began planning for this eventuality before the season began. A few conversations and Sarkisian was flying from Dallas to Tuscaloosa just one day after Alabama opened the season by beating USC (the world, you will remember, is a small ball.) Kiffin was entering a third very successful season as the UA offensive coordinator but would have left after the second year if the right head coaching job had been available. That window was going to get narrower, not wider, as the years piled up in Tuscaloosa.

So Sarkisian was available. Saban knew his work (how much tape of Sarkisian's USC offense did Saban inevitably watch as he prepared for the Trojans over the summer? A great deal, assuredly.) He no doubt had input from Kiffin. So for a nominal sum - less than $3,000 a month - Sarkisian had both a job and an audition. Saban could judge the quality of his work, could watch his attendance at 7 a.m. staff meetings. Had there been problems, there probably wouldn't have been an unceremonious kick out the door. But Sarkisian, who already had a television job lined up before Saban's offer, could have quietly moved on.

All that - and the vast number of benefit-of-the-doubt credits Saban has earned in 10 seasons in Tuscaloosa - make his words on Friday ring true.

“I wouldn’t have anybody in our organization that I didn’t have total faith, trust and confidence in that they would do a good job with our players,” Saban said. “This guy is a part of our family now. We’re going to help support him be successful every way we can. That’s in his life as well as (as) a coach.”

That, as they say, was that. His players believe Saban, because they've seen it. He's in the least desperate position in college football, not because staying on top is easy (it's not) but because he has assembled the best-running machine in the sport and isn't going to run it into a brick wall for the heck of it. Saban isn't perfect - no one is - but when he sees something isn't working, he fixes it fast.

The last time people really wondered what Saban was doing was when he hired Kiffin. That worked well. If it hadn't, Saban would have done his main job - serving as the trustee of the Alabama football program - without hesitation. There's no reason to think that this hire, good or bad, will be handled any differently.

Reach Cecil Hurt at cecil@tidesports.com or 205-722-0225.