The unsmiling sorcery of Nick Saban
Unauthorized biographies are nothing new for Hollywood celebrities, corporate tycoons and disgraced politicians.
They're also not really all that unusual for sports figures. Many complain about books that have unflattering information, or details that counter a carefully crafted mythology.
Alabama football coach Nick Saban has vehemently lashed out against the publication of a new book about him, an extreme and surprising outburst, even for him.
A couple of years ago, Warren St. John famously wrote in a GQ profile that Saban grumbled about how "that damn game cost me a week of recruiting." That would be Alabama's win in the national championship game against his former school, LSU, in 2012.
Monte Burke's "Saban: The Making of a Coach," doesn't have any jolting revelations, other than how Saban's wife wanted out of Miami after his forgettable two-year stint coaching the Dolphins. There's nothing scandalous he's uncovered, or that should be all that surprising to anyone familiar with what St. John called Saban's "pathological drive."
No, it was the mere publication of the book itself, its unauthorizedness, if you will, something he could not control in his tightly controlled, maniacal universe.
"I just want everybody to know that I'm opposed to an unauthorized biography on anybody. If some person that you don't even know (is) trying to profit by your story or someone else's story."
Now, that may seem laughable, given his annual salary in the mid six-figures. But it's not really about the money, or someone profiting from it.
After grousing that he may write an autobiography when he feels like it, on his own terms, Saban continued his tirade this way:
"It's a little amazing to me that the timing of all this happening right when we're starting camp. I just want everybody out there and all of our fans to know, it's not going to be a distraction to us and it's never going to get discussed again."
How dare anyone release a book at the start of a season! No one's expecting Saban to understand the whims of the publishing world, especially about the timing of sports books.
But Alabama fans can't get enough of anything about Unsmilin' Nick, as this long and very good Q and A with Burke for the Roll Bama Roll blog attests.
Burke, a writer at Fortune magazine, admitted he didn't think Saban would like book, given his impressions of their various phone conversations that he's treating in off-the-record form. While Saban didn't authorize the book, neither did he specifically tell the author to get lost. Here's Burke:
"The word has very powerful negative connotations, and I think that may have driven away some people who might have otherwise enjoyed the book, which I consciously tried to keep from sensationalizing. I'll try not to sound like a self-promoting douche here, but the members of the media and the people who have actually read the book have all seemed to like it and have all said it was even-handed. Was that too self-promoting?"
At VICE Sports, Michael Weinreb concludes the book shows that "Saban doesn't appear to have any idea how to be content." It's the perpetuation of that persona, on the verge of a new season, that may irritate the coach the most.
Best reads of the week
Jeff Pearlman went back to his old haunt at Sports Illustrated to do some book research, and noticed that the vaunted news library isn't being relocated to the magazine's new digs. "I feel like I’m losing a brother," he wrote on Monday, horrified at the potential loss of so much archival material to get lost in. He later Tweeted that the library collection won't be destroyed, but will be stored away, since there's no room in the new offices.
At Esquire, Tom Junod gets a head start on all the "Why Do We Still Watch Football?" handwringing, but his answer is decidedly different than what's been peddled in recent years: "The game is the best it's ever been," although he admits to still being conflicted and is a bit too preachy like his shaming predecessors. What happened in the 2014 NFL season, Junod writes, was the introduction of "an element of beauty."
University of Michigan professor Yago Colas has this stylishly written and web-designed piece, "Why (and how to) Read CLR James on Cricket." Colas, who teaches a global sports culture class, will publish "Ball Don't Lie!," about the cultures of basketball, next year.
Excerpts and reviews
Bob D'Angelo found a lot of tasty morsels in Lonnie Wheeler's "Intangiball" (Simon & Schuster), which is all about baseball minutiae that adds up to so much more.
John Bacon's latest book on Michigan football, "Endzone," coinciding with the arrival of coach Jim Harbaugh, is excerpted in The Wall Street Journal.
In June, the New York Public Library's Open Book Night series focused on sports books, and here's a roundup of reader recommendations that include a Ted Williams biography, Evel Knievel, Bob Hurley, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, A.J. Liebling and Joseph O'Neill's cricket-themed novel, "Nederland."
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