Nick Saban happy for Bill Belichick at North Carolina, sees recruiting as 'biggest thing' to battle
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The coaching careers of Bill Belichick and Nick Saban have been intertwined since they were on the same Cleveland Browns staff in the early 1990s.
Over the next three-plus decades, the NFL and college coaching legends combined for 609 wins and 13 championships — 302 victories and a NFL-record six Super Bowl titles for Belichick, and 292 wins and a NCAA-record seven national titles for Saban.
Now, with Saban nearly a year into his retirement following a 17-year run at Alabama, and Belichick leaving the NFL after 24 years with the New England Patriots to join the college ranks and take over as North Carolina’s 72-year-old head coach, the former Crimson Tide coach opened up on his friend’s move.
“I’m happy for Bill. I think he probably wanted a new challenge, and this will certainly be a new challenge for him. North Carolina is a great academic institution, and they’ve got plenty of athletic tradition in basketball, football, and Bill’s a great coach,” Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show. “The difference in college is how do you bring guys to the team. It’s different drafting guys than having to recruit them, because recruiting is like a full-time relationship-building, 365 days a year (effort) in terms of not only evaluating the players that you want but creating relationships with them to get ‘em. Now everybody says (college is) like the NFL because they’re making money now, but it really still takes you to be able to sell them that you’re going to develop them. And I think Bill will be able to do that.
“But I think the biggest thing that will be a challenge for him is the time you have to spend recruiting, making phone calls, talking to parents, all those types of things to get the kind of players that you need. … The biggest adjustment for him will be the time spent recruiting.”
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Saban: NFL career ‘tremendous selling tool’ for Belichick
McAfee then asked Saban — who is seven and a half months older than Belichick — if the longtime NFL coach could delegate any of those interpersonal recruiting duties at UNC. And while Saban agreed Belichick may not have to do the Cupid Shuffle as he did, his iconic NFL career will provide more than enough clout to impress potential recruits.
“I think it’s not as important to the same degree. I think you still have to do it to some degree. But I was the defensive coordinator at Michigan State after George Perles got the head coaching job, … and because he’d been a coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers that won four Super Bowls, his presence went a long way in recruiting with all the kids,” Saban added. “I mean, they all want to play in the NFL, and Bill can certainly sell them on the fact that with all of his success in the NFL and the ways that he’s developed players and the reputation he has as a coach, that he’s going to be able to do that. And that’s going to go a long way for these players.
“Because regardless of what they can make in college, it doesn’t touch what they can make if they have successful careers in the NFL. So I do think that Bill is going to be able to use who he is as a coach as a tremendous selling tool and be able to get great players because of it.”