Sending emails and opening bills: Inside Nick Saban’s ‘new reality’
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The stress level of former Alabama football coach Nick Saban is down exponentially these days, though there are some harrowing moments.
Like when his 3-year-old grandson, James, joins him on the golf course.
“The challenge is keeping him out of the sand traps,” Saban said. “He likes to play in the sand. That’s about the most stress I’ve had.”
The legendary coach’s meticulous attention to detail and unmatched work ethic during his 17 seasons in Tuscaloosa produced six national championships (after he won one at LSU), 123 NFL draft picks — including 44 first-rounders — and a new standard in college football.
But it left little time for anything else. Remember, Saban once reportedly complained about the national title game costing him a week of recruiting time.
So how has Saban adapted to his new life? It’s something his closest confidants, family members and Saban himself are still coming to grips with.
“When you’re in a rat race like he’s been, you could never really step away and appreciate what you’ve accomplished,” said Alabama head athletic trainer Jeff Allen, the only football staff member Saban brought to the Tide who was there for his entire tenure.
“You just never could because in this business as soon as you take a breath, you’re getting beat. He wasn’t going to take a breath.”
Not only is Saban now taking a breath, he’s seeing the world outside of football. He’s experiencing things he never had time for in the past. He’s actually relaxing, a word that previously wasn’t really part of his vocabulary.
“The biggest change for me as a person is that I lived my whole life for the last 50 years being in a hurry,” Saban told ESPN. “It was, ‘Hurry up to go here. Hurry up to go there. Don’t be late for this meeting. You’ve got another meeting in an hour. What are you going to say to the staff? What are you going to say to the team?’
“I mean, it was just deadline after deadline after deadline. Even when I was driving to the lake to go on vacation, I’d be in a hurry, and for what? But that’s just how you were built.”
‘The Ten Commandments of Retirement’
THERE WAS NEVER any debate about who was in charge of Alabama’s football program, but Saban has often joked that his wife of 52 years, Terry, was the family member most proficient at giving orders.
The day after he retired in January, Saban said he had a note from Ms. Terry, as he refers to her, sitting on his chair. It spelled out “The Ten Commandments of Retirement.”
Terry wouldn’t share all of them, but near the top was the decree that Saban wait for her to sit down at the dinner table and to slow down when eating. She also told him it was polite to leave a little something on his plate when eating at a restaurant.
“So at our first dinner at home, he brought his plate to me with half a pickle on it and said, ‘To be polite!'” Terry said.
Another commandment calls for Saban to alter his behavior when they are settling in on the couch. For years, when Terry would get a blanket for herself, she always picked one up for Saban.
“Now, I’d appreciate the same courtesy,” she wrote.
Terry has enrolled Saban into her own version of a “Tech 101” class.
“He’s actually texting and reading his own emails and sent his first-ever email,” Terry said. “He even took his first trip to the pharmacy to pick up his first prescription. He’s actually quite proud of himself.”
To be clear, Saban has hardly become a homebody. He doesn’t hang out watching television, though he admits to being a big fan of “Game of Thrones.”
“I can’t stand sitting around now any more than I could stand it when I was coaching,” Saban said. “I want to stay busy. I think everybody looks at me like, ‘This guy’s a ball coach and that’s all he does.’ I’ve got businesses, I do speaking stuff. I’ve got my TV job now with ESPN. I like to play golf. I’ve got tons of stuff to do. So I’m not retiring to quit working.”
Saban is part-owner of multiple car dealerships, including a Ferrari dealership in Nashville and a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Birmingham. He has a stake in a boutique hotel, The Alamite, in downtown Tuscaloosa.
“What’s so exciting for all of us, especially him, is that he kind of has a blank slate now that he can play around with,” said Saban’s daughter Kristen, who lives in Birmingham. “It’s really nice to see him not have this big stressful thing hanging over him. He’s accomplished so much that I don’t think he feels like he’s leaving anything behind. He’s leaving with no regrets and stepping away with a lot of gratitude and a lot of relief at the same time.
“He’s in a relaxed state of mind that I haven’t really seen him in, and it kind of puts everybody else at peace too.”
Now that Saban is home more, he has been doing the kind of mundane household tasks most don’t even think about but that weren’t part of his routine. Imagine being the delivery driver who finds himself face to face with college football’s greatest coach.
“It’s funny to see people’s reaction when he opens the door because for 17 years he has never been there to answer it,” said Terry, who has had as much fun as anybody reveling in the changes in her husband’s lifestyle.
She joked that Saban has now learned where all the light switches are in the house and has taken to getting the mail. He even opens up some of the bills now.
“Sometimes ignorance is bliss,” Terry said.
Kristen is confident her dad will continue to evolve and adapt in retirement, much as he did when he was coaching. But don’t expect him to show up on social media.
“No chance,” Kristen said, laughing. “People have said they want him on it, and I’ve said it’s just not going to happen. He just learned to text and email. How’s he going to tweet something?”
Kristen promises to post a few pictures of the retirement version of her dad from time to time on her social media accounts.
“But could you imagine him doing an Instagram selfie or something somewhere on the golf course?” she said. “We can hope, but it’s not going to happen.”
And don’t expect Saban to make many grocery store runs, as Kristen and Terry learned their lesson a few years ago when the family was at their old home in Boca Grande, Florida. They sent Saban to the store to restock the fridge with ketchup, mustard and other condiments, and to fill the car with gas. But the perfectionist in Saban quickly became a problem.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can do it,’ and he’s not even in the store for five minutes when he calls and says, ‘There’s a hundred bottles of ketchup and mustard on the shelf. Which kind am I supposed to get?'” Kristen recounted.
Saban was persistent: “Is there a specific brand or size?”
Kristen, who laughs as hard now as she did when the grocery store excursion occurred, said the general response from her and her mom was the same.
“God forbid he grabs the wrong bottle,” she said. “We were like, ‘OK, just grab whatever.'”
A windowless office and lunchtime golf
THE SABANS HAVE a new home in Jupiter Island, Florida, not far from where Tiger Woods lives. They’ve been there for most of March, and though they will spend plenty of time there in the offseason, they will remain based in Tuscaloosa. Saban wants to be close enough where he can be a resource for the university and will also have more time to join Terry in her philanthropic work.
“I want to bring the least amount of attention to me being around here as possible,” Saban said. “So I want to be supportive. I want to be helpful, but I don’t want to be looking over anybody’s shoulder.”
In other words, don’t expect him to be walking around the hallways at the football complex and poking his head in meetings. He’s talked multiple times with new coach Kalen DeBoer and even had a conversation with new defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, but Saban will steer clear of the day-to-day football operation.
He will keep an office on campus, but not in the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility where it had been for the past 17 years. His new office is located above the south end zone of Bryant-Denny Stadium, the opposite side from the Walk of Champions and Saban’s statue, so he won’t have to walk past the 9-foot bronze likeness of himself every morning. His office is modest in size with no windows, and his desk is the same one he had at the football complex.
“It’s just a hell of a lot cleaner,” Saban said.
When he’s heading to the office, Saban leaves the house about the same time he always did, just before 7 a.m. Depending on what he has going on, he may head home around 4 p.m., or he may leave at lunchtime and go hit golf balls. He’s not naïve and knows there will be some football withdrawal as he settles into retirement life.
When Saban was nearing a decision about whether to retire, he spoke with Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells, who has a house in the same area of Jupiter Island. Parcells is in the thoroughbred racing business and cautioned Saban not to fall into the same trap as some of the jockeys he’s seen who keep riding into and beyond their 50s because it’s in their blood and they just can’t give it up.
“It’s a hazardous occupation, and I’m talking about screws just holding those guys’ chests together, and they’re still taking every mount they can get. There’s no way they’re ever going to quit,” Saban said, relaying his conversation with Parcells. “Coaches are like that, too, because as a coach, you think you’ve got to keep coaching, you’ve got to keep teaching, that you can’t do without it.
“But Parcells’ analogy was a good one for me, because you step back and realize that you can.”
Mark Dantonio, who was Saban’s defensive backs coach at Michigan State in the 1990s and was later the Spartans’ head coach for 13 seasons, remembers getting a call from his old boss about two or three days after Dantonio retired in 2019.
“He called just checking on how I was doing, and then two days after that call, he called me back again to check on me,” recalled Dantonio, who is part of the College Football Hall of Fame class of 2024. “When you retire in this business, you’re jumping off a fast car. There’s no landing place. You go from working 365 days, 24 hours a day, to being retired. There’s going to be other things that replace that, but nothing like you’re used to. So there’s quite an adjustment.”
Football will always be a part of Saban’s DNA, whether he’s lending his voice in an attempt to help ease the current chaos in the sport, as he did earlier this month when appearing before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C., or breaking down a matchup on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which he will be a part of this season. Saban has been working overtime watching tape and researching players — many of whom he coached, coached against or recruited — in preparation for ESPN’s NFL draft coverage.
His desk is surrounded by a stack of boxes filled with notes going back more than 20 years. He’s in the process of consolidating his notes from some of the talks he had with coaches and players.
“It’s taken forever because they’re not in order,” Saban said. “I was looking at a talk today, for instance, when I was with the Dolphins before we played the Oakland Raiders. I want to be able to remember what I said to the players, the points I was trying to make, some of the things you want to get across when you’re talking to some of these groups about leadership.”
Joe Pendry was one of Saban’s most trusted confidants in football, and they go all the way back to their West Virginia roots. Pendry, who was Saban’s first offensive line coach at Alabama, offered his longtime pal a very simple piece of advice.
“‘Turn that phone off and leave it off,'” Pendry said he told Saban. “It’s never easy when you’ve done it as long and as well as Nick has and then walk away and not undergo a little bit of a debriefing process. He’ll get there. It just might take him some time, especially on those dates like preseason camp starting and the season starting. As much as anything, he’s going to miss practice because nobody loved being out there coaching and teaching those players more than Nick did.”
Enjoying a ‘new reality’
Saban promised Terry he would walk away from football while their quality of life would still allow them to do things they’ve wanted to but couldn’t because of his schedule. That may mean more trips to their home in Lake Burton, Georgia, where they have a group of friends who don’t bombard him with football talk. Saban has celebrated his birthday (he turns 73 this year) the past few years with those friends. And since his birthday falls on Halloween, usually during an open date on Alabama’s schedule, they don’t gather to watch football, but occasionally dress up in costumes.
Last October, Saban dressed up as explorer John Smith from “Pocahontas.” Other costumes included Thurston Howell III and Lovey from the old television show “Gilligan’s Island.”
“We all are enjoying this new reality of more time, more choices and less stress,” Terry said.
And more time to play golf.
Last month Saban played at a celebrity tournament in Florida with rappers 50 Cent and Travis Scott. When Kristen caught wind of that, she couldn’t resist needling her dad.
“I said, ‘Do you understand who you’re playing golf with right now?'” she asked. “He goes, ‘Yeah, they’re rappers.’ I told him they’re not just rappers, that 50 Cent was the biggest rapper of my generation and Travis Scott is one of the biggest of the current generation. I was like, ‘You have no idea the people you’re in the presence of,’ and he really didn’t.
“He could meet the Dalai Lama and not realize who it was.”
On a typical workday, Saban ate lunch at his desk, the same salad, with turkey slices and cherry tomatoes, day after day. His new office on campus is just steps away from Rama Jama’s, an iconic area restaurant that is a virtual football museum filled with helmets, jerseys and other memorabilia. On the day Saban moved into his new digs, Allen pointed to Rama Jama’s and said, “Coach, now you can walk across the street and get you a hamburger for lunch.”
Saban looked quizzically at the restaurant and said, “Yeah, what is that place? Has it been there for a long time?”
Allen, who had a front-row seat for Saban’s singular focus for 17 seasons, could only laugh.
“Yeah, Coach, for decades,” he responded.
Saban nodded and said that he might try it sometime.
“I just want to be there when he walks in and orders a hamburger,” Allen said with a laugh.
So does Kristen.
“We all do,” she said. “Seeing him sitting there and eating a hamburger in the middle of the day might be the surest sign yet that he’s really retired, and he deserves every bit of it.”
Saban smiled when asked how long it took for a sense of relief to set in after telling his players he was retiring.
“Really as soon as I did it,” he said. “Now, I had to adapt. People would call me and ask me questions. Players would call and ask what they should do, and I would commiserate on it and tell Terry that so-and-so is calling about this or that or whatever.”
Terry’s response was always the same: “It’s not your problem anymore.”
“I had to get used to that part of it,” Saban said.
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Bill Connelly
Almost no word in the English language makes a college football fan more defensive than the L-word: luck.
We weren’t lucky to have a great turnover margin — our coaches are just really good at emphasizing ball security! We’re tougher than everyone else — that’s why we recovered all those fumbles!
We weren’t lucky to win all those close games — we’re clutch! Our coaches know how to press all the right buttons! Our quarterback is a cool customer!
We weren’t lucky to have fewer injuries than everyone else — our strength-and-conditioning coach is the best in America! And again: We’re just tougher!
As loath as we may be to admit it, a large percentage of a given college football season — with its small overall sample of games — is determined by the bounce of a pointy ball, the bend of a ligament and the whims of fate. Certain teams will end up with an unsustainably good turnover margin that turns on them the next year. Certain teams (often the same ones) will enjoy a great run of close-game fortune based on some combination of great coaching, sturdy quarterback play, timely special teams contributions … and massive amounts of unsustainable randomness. Certain teams will keep their starting lineups mostly intact for 12 or more games while another is watching its depth chart change dramatically on a week-to-week basis.
As we prepare for the 2025 college football season, it’s worth stepping back and looking at who did, and didn’t, get the bounces in 2024. Just because Lady Luck was (or wasn’t) on your side one year, doesn’t automatically mean your fortunes will flip the next, but that’s often how these things go. Be it turnovers, close-game fortune or injuries, let’s talk about the teams that were dealt the best and worst hands last fall.
Jump to a section:
Turnover luck | Close games luck
Injuries and general shuffling | Turnaround candidates
Turnover luck
In last year’s ACC championship game, Clemson bolted to a 24-7 halftime lead, then white-knuckled it to the finish. SMU came back to tie the score at 31 with only 16 seconds left, but Nolan Hauser‘s 56-yard field goal at the buzzer gave the Tigers a 34-31 victory and a spot in 2024’s College Football Playoff at Alabama’s expense.
In the first series of the game, Clemson’s T.J. Parker pulled a perfect sack-and-strip of SMU QB Kevin Jennings, forcing and falling on a loose ball at the SMU 33-yard line. Clemson scored two plays later to take a 7-0 lead. Late in the first quarter, Khalil Barnes picked off a Jennings pass near midfield, ending what could have become a scoring threat with one more first down. A few minutes later, Clemson’s Cade Klubnik fumbled at the end of a 14-yard gain, but tight end Jake Briningstool recovered it at midfield, preventing another potential scoring threat from developing. (Klubnik fumbled seven times in the 2024 season but lost only one of them.)
Early in the third quarter, after SMU cut Clemson’s lead to 24-14, David Eziomume fumbled the ensuing kickoff at the Clemson 6, but teammate Keith Adams Jr. recovered it right before two SMU players pounced.
Over 60 minutes, both teams fumbled twice, and Clemson defended (intercepted or broke up) eight passes to SMU’s seven. On average, 50% of fumbles are lost and about 21% of passes defended become INTs, so Clemson’s expected turnover margin in this game was plus-0.2 (because of the extra pass defended). The Tigers’ actual turnover margin was plus-2, a difference of 1.8 turnovers in a game they barely won.
Clemson was obviously a solid team in 2024, but the Tigers probably wouldn’t have reached the CFP without turnovers luck. For the season, they fumbled 16 times but lost only three, and comparing their expected (based on the averages above) and actual turnover margins, almost no one benefited more from the randomness of a bouncing ball.
It probably isn’t a surprise to see that, of last year’s 12 playoff teams, eight benefited from positive turnovers luck, and six were at plus-3.3 or higher. You’ve got to be lucky and good to win, right?
You aren’t often lucky for two straight years, though. It might be noteworthy to point out that, of the teams in Mark Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early 2025 rankings, five were in the top 20 in terms of turnovers luck: No. 5 Georgia, No. 7 Clemson, No. 9 BYU, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 17 Indiana (plus two others from his Teams Also Considered list: Army and Baylor).
It’s also noteworthy to point out that three teams on Schlabach’s list — No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU and No. 15 SMU — ranked in the triple-digits in terms of turnovers luck. Oregon started the season 13-0 without the benefit of bounces. For that matter, Auburn, a team on the Also Considered list, ranked 125th in turnovers luck in a season that saw the Tigers go just 1-3 in one-score finishes. There might not have been a more what-could-have-been team in the country than Hugh Freeze’s Tigers.
Close games
One of my favorite tools in my statistical toolbox is what I call postgame win expectancy. The idea is to take all of a game’s key, predictive stats — all the things that end up feeding into my SP+ rankings — and basically toss them into the air and say, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.”
Alabama‘s 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt on Oct. 5 was one of the most impactful results of the CFP race. It was also one of the least likely results of the season in terms of postgame win expectancy. Bama averaged 8.8 yards per play to Vandy’s 5.6, generated a 56% success rate* to Vandy’s 43% and scored touchdowns on all four of its trips into the red zone. It’s really hard to lose when you do all of that — in fact, the Crimson Tide’s postgame win expectancy was a whopping 98.5%. (You can see all postgame win expectancy data here)
(* Success rate: how frequently an offense is gaining at least 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second and 100% on third and fourth. It is one of the more reliable and predictive stats you’ll find, and it’s a big part of SP+.)
Vandy managed to overcome these stats in part because of two of the most perfect bounces you’ll ever see. In the first, Jalen Milroe had a pass batted at the line, and it deflected high into the air and, eventually, into the arms of Randon Fontenette, who caught it on the run and raced 29 yards for a touchdown and an early 13-0 lead.
In the second half, with Bama driving to potentially take the lead, Miles Capers sacked Milroe and forced a fumble; the ball sat on the ground for what felt like an eternity before Yilanan Ouattara outwrestled a Bama lineman for it. Instead of trailing, Vandy took over near midfield and scored seven plays later. It took turnovers luck and unlikely key-play execution — despite a 43% success rate, Diego Pavia and the Commodores went 12-for-18 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth — for Vandy to turn a 1.5% postgame win expectancy into a victory. It also wasn’t Alabama’s only incredibly unlikely loss: The Tide were at 87.8% to beat Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl but fell 19-13.
(Ole Miss can feel the Tide’s pain: The Rebels were at 76.0% postgame win expectancy against Kentucky and 73.7% against Florida. There was only a 6% chance that they would lose both games, and even going 1-1 would have likely landed them a CFP bid. They lost both.)
Adding up each game’s postgame win expectancy is a nice way of seeing how many games a team should have won on average. I call this a team’s second-order win total. Alabama was at 10.7 second-order wins but went 9-4. That was one of the biggest differences of the season. Somehow, however, Iron Bowl rival Auburn was even more unfortunate.
Based solely on stats, Arkansas State should have won about four games, and Auburn should have won about eight. Instead, the Red Wolves went 8-5 and the Tigers went 5-7.
Comparing win totals to these second-order wins is one of the surest ways of identifying potential turnaround stories for the following season. In 2023, 15 teams had second-order win totals at least one game higher than their actual win totals — meaning they suffered from poor close-game fortune. Ten of those 15 teams saw their win totals increase by at least two games in 2024, including East Carolina (from 2-10 to 8-5), TCU (5-7 to 9-4), Pitt (3-9 to 7-6), Boise State (8-6 to 12-2) and Louisiana (6-7 to 10-4). On average, these 15 teams improved by 1.9 wins.
On the flip side, 19 teams overachieved their second-order win totals by at least 1.0 wins in 2023. This list includes both of 2023’s national title game participants, Washington and Michigan. The Huskies and Wolverines sank from a combined 29-1 in 2023 to 14-12 in 2024, and it could have been even worse. Michigan overachieved again, going 8-5 despite a second-order win total of 6.0. Other 2023 overachievers weren’t so lucky. Oklahoma State (from 10-4 to 3-9), Wyoming (from 9-4 to 3-9), Northwestern (from 8-5 to 4-8) and NC State (from 9-4 to 6-7) all won more games than the stats expected in 2023, and all of them crumpled to some degree in 2024. On average, the 19 overachieving teams regressed by 1.9 wins last fall.
It’s worth keeping in mind that several teams in Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 — including No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU, No. 11 Iowa State, No. 13 Illinois and, yes, No. 21 Michigan — all exceeded statistical expectations in wins last season, as did Also Considered teams like Army, Duke, Missouri and Texas Tech. The fact that Oregon and LSU overachieved while suffering from poor turnovers luck is (admittedly) rather unlikely and paints a conflicting picture.
Meanwhile, one should note that three Way-Too-Early teams — No. 12 Alabama, No. 23 Miami and No. 25 Ole Miss (plus Washington and, of course, Auburn from the Also Considered list) — all lost more games than expected last season. With just a little bit of good fortune, they could prove to be awfully underrated.
Injuries and general shuffling
Injuries are hard to define in college football — coaches are frequently canny in the information they do and do not provide, and with so many teams in FBS, it’s impossible to derive accurate data regarding how many games were missed due to injury.
We can glean quite a bit from starting lineups, however. Teams with lineups that barely changed throughout the season were probably pretty happy with their overall results, while teams with ever-changing lineups likely succumbed to lots of losses. Below, I’ve ranked teams using a simple ratio: I compared (a) the number of players who either started every game or started all but one for a given team to (b) the number of players who started only one or two games, likely as a stopgap. If you had far more of the former, your team likely avoided major injury issues and, with a couple of major exceptions, thrived. If you had more of the latter, the negative effects were probably pretty obvious.
Despite the presence of 1-11 Purdue and 2-10 Kennesaw State near the top of the list — Purdue fielded one of the worst power conference teams in recent memory and barely could blame injury for its issues — you can still see a decent correlation between a positive ratio and positive results. The six teams with a ratio of at least 2.8 or above went a combined 62-22 in 2024, while the teams with a 0.5 ratio or worse went 31-56.
Seven of nine conference champions had a ratio of at least 1.3, and 11 of the 12 CFP teams were at 1.44 or higher (five were at 2.6 or higher). Indiana, the most shocking of CFP teams, was second on the list above; epic disappointments like Oklahoma and, especially, Florida State were near the bottom. (The fact that Georgia won the SEC and reached the CFP despite a pretty terrible injury ratio speaks volumes about the depth Kirby Smart has built in Athens. Of course, the Dawgs also enjoyed solid turnovers luck.)
Major turnaround candidates
It’s fair to use this information as a reason for skepticism about teams like Indiana (turnovers luck and injuries luck), Clemson (turnovers luck), Iowa State (close-games luck), Penn State (injuries luck) or Sam Houston (all of the above, plus a coaching change), but let’s end on an optimistic note instead. Here are five teams that could pretty easily enjoy a big turnaround if Lady Luck is a little kinder.
Auburn Tigers: Auburn enjoyed a better success rate than its opponents (44.7% to 38.5%) and made more big plays as well (8.9% of plays gained 20-plus yards versus 5.7% for opponents). That makes it awfully hard to lose! But the Tigers made exactly the mistake they couldn’t make and managed to lose games with 94%, 76% and 61% postgame win expectancy. There’s nothing saying this was all bad luck, but even with a modest turnaround in fortune, the Tigers will have a very high ceiling in 2025.
Florida Gators: The Gators improved from 41st to 20th in SP+ and from 5-7 to 8-5 overall despite starting three quarterbacks and 12 different DBs and ranking 132nd on the list above. That says pretty spectacular things about their overall upside, especially considering their improved experience levels on the O-line, in the secondary and the general optimism about sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway.
Florida Atlantic Owls: Only one team ranked 111th or worse in all three of the tables above — turnovers luck (111th), second-order win difference (121st) and injury ratio (131st). You could use this information to make the case that the Owls shouldn’t have fired head coach Tom Herman, or you could simply say that new head coach Zach Kittley is pretty well-positioned to get some bounces and hit the ground running.
Florida State Seminoles: There was evidently plenty of poor fortune to go around in the Sunshine State last season, and while Mike Norvell’s Seminoles suffered an epic hangover on the field, they also didn’t get a single bounce: They were 129th in turnovers luck, 99th in second-order win difference and 110th in injury ratio. Norvell has brought in new coordinators and plenty of new players, and the Noles are almost guaranteed to jump up from 2-10. With a little luck, that jump could be a pretty big one.
Utah Utes: Along with UCF, Utah was one of only two teams to start four different quarterbacks in 2024. The Utes were also among only four teams to start at least 11 different receivers or tight ends and among five teams to start at least nine defensive linemen. If you’re looking for an easy explanation for how they fell from 65th to 96th in offensive SP+ and from 8-5 to 5-7 overall, that’s pretty succinct and telling.
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Dan Wetzel
It once seemed improbable that the most compelling figure of the college football offseason would be Bill Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, but somehow, here we are.
Jordon Hudson’s spot in Belichick’s life has always been a public talking point. After all, they started dating two years ago, when Belichick was 71. Of late, though, she’s become an obsession.
Belichick is arguably the greatest coach in the history of the sport, winner of six Super Bowls leading the New England Patriots. His jump to the college ranks and the University of North Carolina is, for purely football reasons, of great intrigue.
Would this work? Could this work?
Currently though, the focus is on Hudson, who takes an active role in managing Belichick’s affairs, including running point on publicity for his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football.”
That includes a viral clip from a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview when Hudson shut down a question about how the two met and was deemed a “constant presence.” That led to all sorts of attention on the relationship, not to mention Belichick’s acuity and Hudson’s recent real estate holdings. Former Patriots great Ted Johnson even told WEEI radio in Boston that “the Tar Heels should consider firing Bill Belichick.”
A few days into this modern controversy, where a social media clip redefines someone with decades in the public eye, can we all settle down for a moment?
As with any relationship, only Belichick and Hudson are privy to what is transpiring between them. But as sensationalistic as all the TikTok comments and website stories currently are, when it comes to actually coaching a football team, let’s settle back on one undeniable truth.
This is Bill Belichick.
Sure, the current attention can be fairly labeled as the kind of “distraction” that might personally crush and professionally derail most people. Belichick is not most people.
“Never been too worried about what everyone else thinks,” Belichick told CBS.
If you allow his history — a lesson from his life in football, if you will — to inform, then you would know that there has rarely, if ever, been any personal feud, situation, tabloid headline or bit of accusational strife that has derailed the man’s single-minded focus on winning.
Belichick doesn’t just thrive in the briar patch of controversy — he seems to prefer it. The more external noise, the better.
A former player standing trial for murder? Win the Super Bowl.
Accused of illegally videotaping opponents? Post a 16-0 season.
A star quarterback alleged to have cheated to win the AFC Championship Game by deflating footballs? Name-drop “My Cousin Vinny” in a news conference, then win the Super Bowl.
Have the team get fined and stripped of a first-round draft pick and the quarterback suspended for the start of the season? Win another Super Bowl.
Maybe this isn’t what he was expecting from the book release, but let’s be clear, he was expecting to create a major media stir.
Belichick is famously passive-aggressive. When he never once mentioned Patriots owner Robert Kraft in his memoir — not even in the acknowledgments — he did so expecting a commotion. This was likely to make it clear that Belichick believed the Patriots’ success during their 24 years together was more based on the coaches and players than the very front-facing owner who, depending whose version you believe, fired Belichick in January 2024.
This was throwing red meat to the sports media machine. It just turned out that the Hudson situation represented even more red meat to the far larger American pop culture/social media machine.
Belichick might not have seen this coming, but this is how he has always operated. He welcomes speculation and even being painted as the villain. Even his closest confidants, from Bill Parcells to Tom Brady, often wind up in prolonged, public ice-outs. There are the endless scraps with the media, the league office, officials or other coaches.
The public questioning his actions and motivation? Please.
Consider that back nearly two decades ago, the NFL made a deal with Reebok for its coaches to wear approved clothes. Belichick bristled at being told what to wear. In an act of fashion defiance, both Patriots and Belichick sources say, he took a plain gray sweatshirt and cut off the sleeves to make it ugly. (It inadvertently became a huge seller, labeled the “BB Hoodie” in the Patriots Pro Shop.)
Or when, in an effort to protest the NFL making teams categorize player injuries — doubtful, questionable, etc. — Belichick began listing Brady as “probable” on the report with a shoulder injury week after week for years despite there being no known injury. Brady would just laugh when asked about it.
Or when he thought the NFL was getting too commercialized, so he refused to have his name used by EA Sports in the Madden video game — “NE Coach” was all that was listed — even though he would make money for literally doing nothing.
Or maybe consider in 2000, when he reversed course on accepting the head coaching job with the New York Jets. Rather than get all apologetic, he handwrote a note that read: “I resign as HC of the NYJ.”
He loves this stuff. Like many highly competitive people, finding an enemy, or some doubt, or some negative opinion about him seemingly feeds him. It certainly doesn’t cause him to wilt.
The current kerfuffle isn’t much different from past ones. He’s been through divorce, and his dating life was even fodder for the New York tabloids. It didn’t matter. He just kept winning.
All of that makes it unlikely that Hudson is somehow bossing Belichick around — or that she would even want to. This is just BB.
Whatever happens with the couple — we wish them the best — is one thing, but anyone who thinks Belichick is somehow incapable of weathering some gossip or jokes, or won’t be laser-focused on coaching, teaching and preparing his players, hasn’t been paying attention.
Here’s guessing Belichick will be fine. He always has been.
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