Monte Burke grew up in Birmingham rooting for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team. As a writer at Forbes magazine, he found himself charmed by Alabama coach Nick Saban after shadowing the Crimson Tide coach on the Tuscaloosa campus while working on a 2008 cover story about Saban.
The magazine article convinced Burke to spend several years researching and writing a biography of Saban, a book published in August. Two days after a book signing and launch party for Burke at a Birmingham bookstore that included camera crews from ESPN, Saban ended his first news conference of fall practice with an unprompted diatribe about “Saban: The Making of a Coach,” Burke’s 341-page book published by Simon & Schuster.
 |
Please enter image description here.
Photo by: Enter Name Here |
Standing in the Alabama media room, Saban told reporters, “I just want everybody to know that I’m opposed to an unauthorized biography for anybody. I think that’s some person that you don’t even know trying to profit by your story. One of these days, when I’m finished coaching at Alabama, I’ll write an authorized book because, you know, there’s really only one expert on my life. And guess who that is? Me.”
Saban was just getting started. “And there won’t be any misinformation, there won’t be any false statements, there won’t be any hearsay,” the coach went on to say. “There won’t be any expert analysis from somebody else. It’ll be the real deal. But I’m not really ready for that to happen. And, you know, it’s a little amazing to me that the timing of all this [is] 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. But, since I’m not finished yet at Alabama, we’re not writing any books yet. But when we decide to write an authorized book, it will have truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
The following week Burke’s book debuted on the extended best-seller list of The New York Times, ranking 17th. Whether the success came in spite of or because of Saban’s soliloquy remains a topic of debate.
Burke’s book tells the life story of Saban, who, at 63, has won four national championships and is considered one of the most dominant college coaches of his era.
“I wasn’t surprised that he did that,” the 43-year-old Burke told SportsBusiness Journal recently. “For one reason, he likes to control as much as he can. That works out great when it comes to a football program. It’s a little hard to control the media, however. It didn’t surprise me that much. I don’t think he’s read it. Maybe someday he’ll actually sit down and read it and then we’ll see what he really thinks.”
 |
Alabama’s Nick Saban told reporters that he opposes the idea of an unauthorized biography.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
|
Through 250 interviews with Saban’s rivals, former players, colleagues, bosses and childhood friends, Burke takes an even-handed approach while chronicling the coach’s rise from small-town West Virginia to the top of the coaching ranks.
Mark Manchin, who grew up playing football with Saban on a team coached by Saban’s father, tells Burke, “I don’t remember him ever laughing or smiling. I don’t remember him being happy. I swear I don’t.”
Excerpts published by The New York Times, Deadspin and others likely prompted Saban’s outburst. The portions of Burke’s book shared by newspapers and websites recount Saban’s flirtation with the coaching job at the University of Texas two years ago as well as the antics of Miami Dolphins players who taunted Saban during his mediocre, and short-lived, NFL tenure. An account of a locker-room speech to his Alabama players — including an aside invoking Hillary Rodham Clinton as the punch line — left Saban looking crass and crude.
Whatever the cause, longtime observers of Alabama football differ on the impact of Saban’s disclaimer on the book’s sales.
“I think it did hurt,” said Paul Finebaum, host of a daily talk show on the SEC Network and a frequent college football analyst on ESPN. Finebaum, who covered Alabama football for 30 years while living in Birmingham, points out Burke’s book was released on Aug. 4 and Saban made his remarks on Aug. 6. “My sense is that the book sales were already factored in the first week and it did reasonably well. I just think [Saban’s comments] hurt from there on. … Based on knowing [Saban] and people around him, for whatever reason, [the biography] began to irritate him. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but if he was trying to kill book sales, he probably succeeded.”
Jake Reiss, owner of Alabama Booksmith, the store that launched the book, allows that Saban may have deterred some fans from reading the book with his public rebuke. Others, though, will read it anyway — and the controversy could stir fans of rival schools to buy the biography in hopes of finding nuggets that put Saban in a negative light.
Because of the tradition of Alabama football, and the team is expected to be in the national title race once again this season, Reiss says the book — which is No. 6 on the monthly New York Times best-seller list for September — likely will have an extended run through the holidays.
“My gut says that [Saban] coming out talking about it probably raised the profile a little bit nationally,” Burke said. “And I bet, locally, with some hard-core Alabama fans, it probably shut the door on that. Maybe it’s a wash. It’s a shame about the Alabama fans not picking it up because it’s partially written for them.”
None of which has discouraged Burke in the least.
He remains fascinated by the cult of the football coach, one of the last places where a figure in power can scream at his underlings and still thrive. And, while he hasn’t selected his next subject, another coach is a strong possibility.
“I find football coaches to be such wonderful characters,” he said. “They fill so many roles at once: father figures, coaches, mentors, psychologists, priests. They’re politicians. They’re media celebrities. The way they lead, the pressure they face, it takes an extraordinary person to want to be a big-time football coach. It takes an even more extraordinary person to be really good at it.”
Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.
