Nick Saban announces Alabama's acting coach in his absence for Auburn game
Steve Sarkisian is once again stepping into the acting coach role for Alabama. Nick Saban, who tested positive for COVID-19, shared the news on Wednesday’s SEC media teleconference.
“Sark will oversee things in the building in my absence,” Saban said.
As Alabama found out ahead of the Georgia game, Saban will not have communication with the sideline during Saturday’s Iron Bowl game against Auburn.
“As it is right now, you can have no communication with the sideline, as I understand it,” Saban told reporters.
“He has experience as a head coach. He will call the plays,” Saban said of Sarkisian. “We discussed this before during UGA week…”
Saban says that Sarkisian being in charge won’t lead to any major changes this week.
“We won’t change anything other than some of the administrative, game-day decisions he’ll have to be involved in.”
Sarkisian has six-plus seasons of experience as a head coach at Washington and USC. As Washington’s head coach from 2009-13, he went 34-29 before leaving to take the USC job. With the Trojans, Sarkisian went 9-4 in 2014, his first season. USC was 3-2 in 2015 before Sarkisian went on a leave of absence to address his battle with alcoholism. He was later let go by Southern Cal.
Sarkisian first joined Saban’s staff in 2016 as an analyst. That postseason, Sarkisian stepped in for Lane Kiffin as offensive coordinator in the national championship game against Clemson. Sarkisian left to become the Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator in 2017. He was fired from Atlanta on Dec. 31, 2018, and returned to Alabama in January 2019 to be Saban’s offensive coordinator.
Heir apparent? Discuss.
Unlikely. Sark will be hired away by the end of the season while Saban has shown no signs of slowing down.
Tell me where will he go? List at least one place he will go that will be opening up at the end of the year or to one that have an opening right now?
speculation is the NFL will come calling….
You better hope not
LSU better worry about getting the defense fix for next year.
Saban will never retire, he’s gonna be like Joe Pa, hanging on to the bitter end.
Bitter? More like sweet….
Frozen meant bitter for the rest of the SEC.
If Alabama plays like it has been playing…Sarkisian can handle it. I have concern about those halftime adjustments though. Roll Tide !
Beat Auburn !
If it was anybody but Auburn it might be a problem
If it were anybody but Auburn, LSU, UT, MSU, UGA, Ole Miss, Vandy, and on and on and on It might be a problem…
Poptiger, Auburn’s won 2 of the past 3 vs bama. How many times has LSU beat them the past 10? ONCE..
And just 4 out of the last 10 (which isn’t too shabby). Don’t compare just three seasons for Auburn and 10 against LSU. Both are 1 and 1 for the last 2 seasons.
Personally I think they’ll do fine without Coach, if they play like they have all year, though his presence is a huge advantage. We’ll See how it goes. Roll Tide!!!!
I think you guys will be fine. The Saban Way is firmly embedded in their brains and no team in America has as good a bunch of player leaders as Bama. I feel the culture Saban created and sustains is a model everyone aspires to. Plus, they know he is watching and taking notes!
My only concern would be can he still call the plays while the head coach
My only concern would be can he still call the plays while the head coach is looking over his shoulder?
When you win that much, who cares about this rule. The sideline staff could all take turns calling the plays. Or you know what, we called our own plays in the huddle and didn’t do a bad job. It sure made the game more fun than getting the plays from somewhere else. The men on the field called it and the men on the field executed it. Usually we took the first call of the quarterback but sometimes somebody had a clearly better idea to switch in quickly. If not everybody kept their mouth shut and we made the quarterback’s call work.