RIP Charlie Kirk. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is of Charlie or his politics if you don’t view this as one of the darkest days in American history than you are part of the problem.
We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!
(TS: 10 Sep 15:02 ET)
Nick Saban never wanted to leave.
For years, he begged Michigan State to invest in its football program.
The facilities ranked at the bottom of the Big Ten, 15 years overdue for renovation.
Saban told administrators the program would thrive with a budget closer to the conference median.
The answer was always “no”.
After 3 years of this song-and-dance, Saban gave up.
He told his friend Tom Izzo the school wasn’t serious about football, and he couldn’t fight it anymore.
Saban bolted south. But his Spartan story wasn’t over.
The night before a press conference to introduce him as the head coach at LSU, Nick Saban sat silently in the corner of a Baton Rouge hotel room.
He realized he couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t leave the best team he’d ever had, so much business left to finish.
He couldn’t leave a campus he once described as “perfect, like a national park with a school in it.”
He couldn’t leave Tom Izzo, his best friend who had stood beside him as he told his players “goodbye”.
Nick Saban was at the crossroads in a Louisiana Ramada, and he wanted to go home.
With his wife’s blessing, the coach called MSU Trustee Joel Ferguson and dropped the bombshell.
“I’m coming back.
I don’t care about money, or the facilities.
I’ll fly home tomorrow, if you’ll have me.”
Ferguson was stunned, but thrilled.
The Trustees were on board, but it wasn’t their call.
The fate of this shocking potential reunion laid in the hands of MSU President M. Peter McPherson.
“I may have made a mistake coming down here,” Saban said.
The coach made it clear: He wanted to stay at Michigan State.
MSU President McPherson, although intrigued by Saban's change of heart, decided against bringing the coach back to East Lansing."
-Lynn Henning
The Detroit News
The next morning, Nick Saban was introduced as the head coach of LSU.
Saban never wanted to leave East Lansing, and had begged to return.
But MSU said “no thank you”, then hired Bobby Williams instead.
3 years later, Williams was fired midseason after a 46-point loss in Ann Arbor.
Williams finished 6-15 (.285) in the B1G in his dreadful Spartan tenure.
Rejected and dejected, Nick Saban hung up the phone in his hotel room and won 7 national championships.