Would You Buy a Car From Nick Saban? How Don James Made Him Become a Coach
Nick Saban was done with Kent State football and school, but his wife Terry had another year of classes to finish.
Waiting for her to graduate, the former starting safety decided he would sell cars at a local dealership for the next year.
Don James, his Kent State coach, had a much better idea — he called Saban into his office and offered him a job as a graduate assistant.
One sales pitch eliminated the need for another.
"Don said, 'You know Nick, I think you would make a heckuva good coach,' " said Carol James, wife of her husband, who died in 2013.
James and Saban coached together for the 1973 and '74 seasons, when the Golden Flashes posted 9-2 and 7-4 records. Following that, James was hired away by Washington, where he became one of the nation's all-time college football coaches.
Saban, now at Alabama and considered one of the game's very elite coaches himself after winning six national championships, was resistant to the idea of becoming a graduate assistant at first.
"Don James actually talked me into being a coach by offering me a graduate assistant position, when I didn't want to be a coach or go to grad school," Saban said years later.
A West Virginia native, Saban arrived at Kent State first, accepting a scholarship offer from coach Dave Puddington over those from Miami of Ohio and Navy. At the last minute, he had second thoughts and walked away from a military appointment.
Puddington resigned two years later in 1970, following a 3-7 season and the infamous National Guard campus shootings that took the lives of three student protesters, citing the negativity of it all.
Saban, then a sophomore, witnessed the aftermath of the senseless violence that killed a girl who had been in one of his classes. He missed the actual gunfire because he stopped to eat lunch.
To replace Puddington, Kent State athletic director Mike Lude hired James, a Colorado assistant coach, to lead the football program in 1971.
James had grown up 35 miles from the university in Massillon, Ohio. He'd previously met Lude, who was the Colorado State football coach and fired. They would end up at Washington together.
But first things first. James had linebacker Jack Lambert and Saban on his defense and tight end Gary Pinkel on his offense as they went 3-8 and 6-5-1.
The second season was good enough for the Golden Flashes to win the Mid-American Conference championship for the only time in school history and appear in the last of two bowl games, losing to Tampa and John Matuszak 21-18 in the Tangerine Bowl.
All along, Saban was taking copious notes and studying his trade.
"He was just learning everything," Carol James said. "He absorbed everything like a sponge. Don just knew he'd be a great coach because he absorbed it and then applied it, maybe not even the way Don applied it, but what suited his personalty. He was a great young GA."
Saban said James' finite organizational skills impressed him the most.
"He was systematic about everything he did and defined what the expectations for everything in the organization were," Saban said of his coach. "He worked hard and he did things the way I thought they should be done."
He stayed two more years at Kent State as an assistant coach for Dennis Fitzgerald before starting his-long-winding coaching career that next took him as an assistant to Syracuse, West Virginia, Ohio State, Navy, Michigan State and the Houston Oilers.
In 1987, Saban tried to come back to Kent State as the head coach, but was passed over for Dick Crum, who had been fired at North Carolina State and then coached the Golden Flashes to 13 consecutive losing seasons.
Saban landed his first head-coaching job at Toledo in 1990, stayed one season and returned to the NFL as an assistant for Bill Bellichek and the Cleveland Browns. Saban's replacement at Toledo was his old teammate, Pinkel, who left as UW offensive coordinator for James to take his first head-coaching job.
Saban became the head coach for Michigan State, LSU, the Miami Dolphins and Alabama, joining the Crimson Tide in 2007. He won a national title at LSU and five for Alabama.
"He still gives Don credit," Carol James said. "It just make my heart warm."
And to think if James hadn't interceded, Saban might have car dealerships all over Ohio right now. He would probably make you a good deal.
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