Falcon Report

Nick Saban a ‘Liar’: Falcons Legend Deion Sanders Rips Alabama Coach

The Falcons legend had some words for the Alabama coach.

Mike Fisher

A liar.

A hypocrite.

“Despicable.”

College football is suddenly revealing its seedy underbelly..

Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban has opted to address the new NIL trend by starting a game of feces-throwing.

But in the case of Atlanta Falcons legend Deion Sanders - who always had some of the best hands in the history of athletics - Saban is now dealing with somebody who can field his feces and throw it right back.

"You best believe I will address that lie coach Saban told,'' said Sanders, who now coaches at Jackson State.

And Texas A&M Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher's response to similar accusations?

Saban, Fisher said on Thursday, is "despicable.''

What makes Saban a "liar''? Or, maybe, a hypocrite?

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Deion, Jimbo, Nick

"We were second in recruiting last year. (Texas) A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team," Saban said at an event in Birmingham on Wednesday night. "Made a deal for name, image, and likeness. We didn’t buy one player.''

And he continued, not just roasting the rival Aggies but also Sanders' HBCU program.

“We have a rule right now that said you cannot use name, image and likeness to entice a player to come to your school. Hell, read about it in the paper!” Saban said. “I mean, Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school. It was in the paper and they bragged about it. Nobody did anything about it.”

Sanders is livid about the accusation as it regards the recruiting of Travis Hunter.

"We as a people don’t have to pay our people to play with our people,'' Sanders wrote.

This is not new territory for Saban, who after Texas A&M upset the No. 1 Tide in College Station last season seemed particularly angry with his former pupil, Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher, and the way the Aggies conduct their business.

The Aggies finished the 2021 recruiting cycle with the unanimous top class in the country across all services. Some even called the Aggies' haul the greatest class in the history of the modern recruiting era.

Saban's Aggies accusations therefore come across as sour grapes. And you know what? Assuming Saban wished Hunter had signed with 'Bama, that's more sour grapes.

Saban doesn't disagree with the NIL at its core. He actually believes that players deserve the opportunity to earn money. His point is that at Alabama, it's being done "the right way.'' ... and that his competition is at the very least coloring outside the lines.

“The issue and the problem with name, image and likeness is coaches try to create an advantage for themselves by going out and saying, ‘OK, how can we use this to our advantage?’” Saban said. "That’s not what (NIL) was supposed to be. That’s what it’s become and that’s the problem in college athletics right now.”

It is inarguably a problem. But it is a problem born of a system that has made Saban rich, powerful and famous. That system is college sports itself, and the often fraudulent concept that these are "amateur athletes'' and "student/athletes'' and that their scholarship is reward enough.

We don't remember Nick Saban railing against that seedy underbelly while first LSU and then Alabama used every single rule - maybe coloring right to the edge of the lines? - to win him seven national championships.

But now, suddenly, it's not acceptable to push the envelope?

Saban should be careful here as he angrily tosses his feces to see what sticks. ... because as holier-than-thou as he suggests his program is, that feces can always bounce off the wall and back at the tosser.

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Mike Fisher
MIKE FISHER

Mike Fisher - as a newspaper beat writer and columnist and on radio and TV, where he is an Emmy winner - has covered the NFL since 1983, is the author of two best-selling books on the NFL.

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