Michigan statement

Sporting News, The, Dec 4, 1995 by Terry Frei

Nick Saban is walking on the Michigan State campus and stepping back in time, to when he was a young assistant coach joining George Perles' staff in 1983. "I thought, `Now this is what a college campus should be like,'" Saban tells me, sweeping his hand for emphasis in the next few strides. "The trees. The river. It's like a national park with a college in it."

That was one reason Saban, the Browns' defensive coordinator, sought -- and got -- the Michigan State job in late 1994. East Lansing and the adjacent Michigan capital of Lansing are not everyone's nirvana, yet the more I wandered around the sprawling MSU campus, the more I appreciated it. I understood with more clarity that Saban, the deminutive MSU head coach, fit here, that he was not an ambitious pro assistant simply saying: Michigan State is a coveted job, so here's the resume, folks.

Saban's first team lost a 24-20 heartbreaker at home to Penn State last Saturday, yet finished a surprising 6-4-1 overall and in fifth place in the Big Ten. The Spartans' season isn't over: They were expected to go to the Independence Bowl. Like all new head coaches, Saban has spent his first year on the job sifting through our often hypocritical messages about what we want out of college football. He did it with the style of a man who neatly orders his life as if it were divided into periods, announced by an equipment manager with a blowhorn. Or by a coal mine's whistle.

In 1968, Nick's senior year at Monongah (West Va.) High School, 78 men died in an accident at the nearby mine. Nick had run across some of the coal miners during his hitchhiking travels around the lightly populated region, where thumbs turned any spot into a bus stop.

Nick, the Monongah High quarterback, the son of a service-station owner, got out. He was a defensive back and shortstop at Kent State, and he was a horrified freshman on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students.

Reflecting the calendar's relentlessness, the men of aD authority-questioning generation now are telling college students: You will do this. When they happen to be major college football coaches who have just gotten their reputation-defining opportunities, they face the 1990s challenges about honor. Specifically: When taking over a program in a down cycle, can you afford to have honor?

"It's almost like I have a lot of money but I stole it all, so do I feel good about being rich?" Saban is saying during his first interview with The Sporting News for this story, at the Browns' offices in December 1994. "Or is it better if I worked hard, earned every cent and developed financial security for myself because of my work ethic and willingness to do things correctly? I'd rather do it the second way."

Every new coach says something like that, doesn't he? All but the most deceitful probably believe it. But then comes the test, a test we can be thinking about as we start following The Saban Year. Knowing that we ultimately judge by the scoreboard standard, do coaches begin to rationalize the dilution of their do-it-right ideals?

November 1994

George Perles' firing is announced in early November 1994, but he will coach the Spartans through the rest of the season. Saban was Perles' defensive coordinator for MSU's '87 Big Ten and Rose Bowl championship team, was the Oilers' defensive backs coach for the next two seasons and then spent one year as the head coach at Toledo, going 9-2 before moving on to the Browns.

Five days before the Spartans finish the '94 season at Penn State, Saban meets the MSU selection committee at a Detroit hotel. The committee has six other members, but MSU President Peter McPherson is taking charge. Saban is fighting the perceptions he might be an NFL coach at heart, and that he is closely tied to Perles.

Look, Saban tells the committee, I don't want just any head-coaching job; I want this one. Saban and his wife, Terry, met at a junior high science camp, and their relationship overcame a rough start when Nick stood up Terry on their first date -- a 5 a.m. appointment to go bird-watching. They were married for more than a decade before Nick Jr. and Kristen arrived, and now Terry and Nick are concerned about where their children will be raised. A college town would be nice; the Lansing area would be ideal. The Perles issue? Saban's extensive resume marks him as his own man ... not Perles' nor anyone else's.

One problem: McPherson is impressed with Fran Ganter, Penn State's offensive coordinator. On November 26, 1994, MSU loses, 59-31, to the Nittany Lions in State College. Afterward, Perles conducts a rambling filibuster before he is asked a question; I feel as if I am listening to Richard Nixon beginning by saying his mother was a saint. "I worry about the young coaches because there's so much pressure on them to win because the dollar is so tight nowadays with gender equity," Perles says.

Perles finishes 5-6 in his final season and 73-62-4 at MSU.

December 2

It is a Friday night, and Ganter turns down McPherson, and the MSU president offers the job to Saban a few minutes before midnight. Saban's five-year contract calls for a beginning base salary of $135,000. He gets a $150,000 bonus in the year 2000 if: