Former top assistants Will Muschamp and Kirby Smart reveal Nick Saban’s computer issues have been a lifelong problem with great tales from their LSU days.
When Nick Saban asks you to rewind a computer, you do it.
Saban may be the greatest college football coach of all time, but even he has his blind spots. None is more painfully obvious than his obliviousness to technology. Prior to sheltering in place, Saban had no earthly idea on how to use email. His wife Terry took care of that for him until these last few months. Texting, social media or any of that other fancy mumbo jumbo was never Saban’s thing.
So how technologically inept is Saban? Well, you just have to hear what two of his greatest protegés had to say about him from their time together on the 2004 LSU Tigers staff. South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp and Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart sat down with CBS’ Adam Zucker to discuss Saban’s technological issues, among other things.
“When we were at LSU, we went to XOS, which is all computer,” said Muschamp to Zucker. “When we first got there, Nick would only work with Beta tape. So you had to insert in and out. So I was always by the computer and I would always just click to get to the next play or the next segment we wanted to watch.”
“And for four years, Nick would ask me, ‘Is it rewound yet?’ And I had to explain to him, ‘It doesn’t rewind anymore!’ And finally, I just quit [correcting him and said], “Yeah, it’s rewound. We’re good to go.'”
Muschamp spent four years on Saban’s staff beginning as the linebackers coach in 2001, emerging as the defensive coordinator in their final three years together in Baton Rouge. He followed Saban to the NFL with the Miami Dolphins as an assistant head coach in 2005. Did Saban ask if computers could be rewound too in the NFL?
“Hey, that was my rookie year out of coaching,” said Smart following up Muschamp. “I had to carry Beta tapes, almost like VCR tapes. I had to carry 30 tapes over to the meeting room from my office. And I was like, ‘Why are we taking these tapes?’ They’re all in the computer. You can just click on them on the computer. And he wanted the tapes there. He didn’t trust the computer…”
2004 was Smart’s first year working with Saban. He had just been a graduate assistant for Bobby Bowden at Florida State. Smart did not initially follow Saban to the NFL, opting to go to his alma mater to coach the running backs for a season before reuniting with Saban in Miami in 2006. He was with Saban during his first 10 years at the University of Alabama, possibly carrying tapes.
While a pair of Gen-Xers poke fun at their Baby Boomer mentor’s nonexistent computer skills, neither Muschamp, Smart nor any of his other protegés has ever beaten him on the gridiron. It’s clearly all in the tape, but what does the tape say? Saban will never tell, so quit asking.
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