Can you picture Alabama coach Nick Saban driving a Coke truck, delivering pallets of the beverage to gas stations and supermarkets in Akron, Ohio?
Well, from 1971-74, that’s what he did.
ESPN looked at the first jobs of several head coaches Friday, including Saban, Arkansas’ Bret Bielema, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier and Tennessee’s Butch Jones. Here are the highlights.
SABAN DRIVES COKE TRUCK
Saban served as a graduate assistant for coach Don James at Kent State in ’73 and ’74, becoming a linebackers coach the next season for $8,000. That was enough for him to ditch his four-year job as a Coke driver.
“It’s hilly in the Akron area, and I’d burn up a clutch every summer,” Saban said, according to ESPN. “The third summer I was there, my boss said, ‘This damn thing ain’t a footrest.’ But you’re on a hill in this big-ass truck, and it starts to roll back, and you’re riding that clutch as hard as you can.”
BIELEMA, A BUICK AND A STEAK
After working as an Iowa graduate assistant for two years, making $6,000 per year, the Hawkeyes hired Bret Bielema as linebackers coach.
Then-head coach Hayden Fry broke down the terms and benefits with the classic “good news, bad news” rhetoric. Only to Bielema, the news was all tremendous.
“I’m like ‘what’s the bad news?’ He goes ‘well, the only car we can give you is a Buick Skylark.’ I’m like, ‘Have you seen what I’m driving, man?’ So I got a brand new Buick Skylark,” Bielema told ESPN.
“The good news, he goes, ‘I can give you $60,000.’ I was making $6,000. I thought like I was a millionaire. I went to Lone Star and ordered a steak. I thought I was pretty big time.”
SPURRIER CREATES OFFENSE
Steve Spurrier’s first job actually was as a punter for the San Francisco 49ers. Drafted No. 3 overall in 1967 after winning the Heisman Trophy at Florida, Spurrier spent most of his nine-year NFL career as a backup quarterback. He also punted, as specialists weren’t as in vogue then.
After his career ended, he became a quarterback coach at Florida. Due to a coaching change, he bounced from Gainesville to Atlanta (Georgia Tech) to Durham, N.C. (Duke) in three years. But in 1980, as a first-time offensive coordinator for the Blue Devils, he inherited a big responsibility.
“The head coach said, ‘You can make up the offense.’ I said, ‘Really?’ He didn’t have a terminology, a numbering system, so me and the line coach made up the offense,” Spurrier told ESPN. “I’m still making them up (today), still the same numbers as 1980, 35 years ago.”
BUTCHÂ THE TENNIS COACH
Tennessee coach Butch Jones got his start as offensive coordinator at Wilkes (Pa.) University. In order to earn his salary, Jones tripled as intramural director and the men’s tennis coach.
“I’ve never played one tennis match, I couldn’t tell you one thing about tennis, and God bless the individuals on the team,” Jones told ESPN. “I was basically a glorified van driver to matches. But again, it was a way to get in the profession and continue to move up.”
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
