The joke on January 10 was that Michigan football ended Nick Saban, the legendary head coach of Alabama. It was just nine days after the Wolverines beat the Crimson Tide in the Rose Bowl, which ended up being the last game that the coach with the most national championships in college football roamed the sideline as a team’s leader.
It turns out, that isn’t exactly too far from the truth.
ESPN’s Chris Low put together a long piece on Alabama’s coaching turnover and how the Tide were able to secure Kalen DeBoer from Washington in just over two days from Saban’s retirement announcement. In that piece, Saban openly admits that one of the contributing factors was the way his team acted in the aftermath of Michigan’s stunning overtime win.
Low:
But Alabama’s 27-20 overtime loss to Michigan in the CFP semifinal at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 was a hard one for Saban to digest. Not only was Saban upset about the way his team played, he was especially disheartened about some of the things that happened afterward — in the Rose Bowl locker room and back on campus, when he met with some of the players.
“I want to be clear that wasn’t the reason, but some of those events certainly contributed,” Saban said of his decision to retire. “I was really disappointed in the way that the players acted after the game. You gotta win with class. You gotta lose with class. We had our opportunities to win the game and we didn’t do it, and then showing your ass and being frustrated and throwing helmets and doing that stuff … that’s not who we are and what we’ve promoted in our program.”
So now it’s undeniable — Michigan retired Saban.
Surely there were other reasons, but it’s not quite as fun to say if you’re a football fan in the southeast Great Lakes State.
Story originally appeared on Wolverines Wire
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/michigan-football-really-did-play-011139273.html
Author : Wolverines Wire
Publish date : 2024-03-07 01:11:39
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