Who's next for the Dolphins?

GODDAMN YOU FLORIDA MARLINS!!!

 

Well, he's slightly better at being a NFL owner than he was in baseball... How many other cities would be mad at an owner for "buying a World Series" if someone did that for the Cubs, there would be a statue of them in front of Wrigley Field.

 

Who's next for the Dolphins?
All I can say is...

 

Norm Chow, baby!

 

I don't care if he bought a World Series, it was his shameless gutting of the team that reeked.

 

Dennis Erickson

 

He needed a new stadium and couldn't get it. Face it, he bought the Marlins to be part of the Wayne's World complex that Blockbuster was building in western Broward. Once he sold Blockbuster, the Marlins weren't going to be financially viable without a publicly funded stadium. So he threw a bunch of cash into the team, but he didn't get the stadium. So he did the smart thing and sold off players. It's not exactly as if most of the guys on the 1997 team had been there for more than a season or two.

 

Except he could Leinart (again), James, Fitzgerald and Boldin as opposed to ... Culpepper? Harrington? I know the Cardinals are a cursed franchise, but they might look like a much better option for Chow these days.

 

LeBartard nails Saban. Can hardly wait for Hyde on Thurs.

BY DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com
The punctuation on the Nick Saban Error is greasy and greedy. You know what he was as Dolphins coach? A failure. A loser. A gasbag. And one of the worst investments Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga has ever made. He was less of a success than Dave Wannstedt and more of a traitor than Ricky Williams. There has been very little in franchise history that came with more expectations and fewer results than this hypocrite who at the end avoided the hard questions one last time.

Talk like a warrior. Behave like a weasel.

Maybe Saban would be better off in college. Because, in the pros the last few days, he has looked like a complete and utter amateur.

He will be remembered in these parts as a quitter and a liar. He leaves the franchise in last place, with what used to be his good name somehow far lower than that. And for this he'll get a $25 million raise and more job security in Alabama. Makes you wonder what USC's Pete Carroll or Ohio State's Jim Tressel are worth, doesn't it?

Larry Coker, a decent man, gets fired for his one championship. Saban, a duplicitous one, gets the most lucrative job in college football.

Saban could have fixed his reputation today if he had that mental toughness he is always sermonizing about. We have the meandering spiel memorized by now. About ''competitive character'' and ''overcoming adversity'' and blah, blah, blah. You preach it, Nick. But you don't live it. Not when it's easier to run away and hide.

Miami, 6-10 against an easy schedule, was swept this year by younger teams in its division -- the Jets and Bills. The team isn't better than when Saban arrived, just older. What little winning Saban has done has been with players left for him by Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt. What's the best decision Saban has made in two years? Can you name one?

So it makes sense that he would lack hope. But when his players are losing, he asks them to be proud and fight and overcome, even though what they do hurts a hell of a lot more than what he does. But now, reputation in tatters, integrity stained, he runs away from this fight -- to be a dictator to kids who question less and have less power to challenge him. Of course he'd go. It's a good deal easier. And a new crowd eager for a savior can hear his hot-air speeches about being a gladiator.

Saban made Huizenga look like a public fool with all his condescending talk of integrity recently, reprimanding reporters at every turn while his agent secretly kept taking slimy calls from Alabama in the shadows. What a raging fraud Saban sounds like today, every bit as counterfeit as Miami's Super Bowl expectations.

Oh, a man, even one under contract, is allowed to change his mind and listen to other offers, especially those that double his salary. But what makes Saban's behavior so unctuous recently is that he had the audacity to question the questioners with super-sized arrogance even while lying all along to his players and his boss. Huizenga has given this man everything he has wanted -- given him more than any NFL owner anywhere has given any other coach. He deserves better than this. He deserves better than Saban leaving him to answer the hard questions today.

Makes you wonder, too: Huizenga went after Ricky Williams and his money with cutthroat zeal, and Williams is still paying him back. But Saban just broke a contract, too. There are no outs in Saban's contract to go back to the minor leagues.

Remember how mad you were when Williams retired? Well, he wasn't cheating on you. He wasn't grabbing for more money. His body hurt from a beating, and he wanted to rest. What Saban has done is a more traitorous act -- the most traitorous act in the history of the franchise. He's leaving simply because he couldn't handle a hard job on the sidelines of a game in which he asks others to be violent. He gave up, in other words. And filing it under ''family'' now as a diluter, in search of understanding, rings hollow because you can't believe anything the man says about this situation. You think he'd be leaving if he were 13-3?

Saban, infomercial sermonizer, talked a lot about loyalty and integrity and toughness.

But, in the end, these were not his guides.

They were only the kinds of things he demanded of others.

 

Damn, Dan LeBatard ethered Saban. Well deserved though. The saying "You'll never work in this town again" definitely should apply to Saban and the NFL. Any GM/President/CEO/Owner that wants to interview this guy after things fall apart in Tuscaloosa (which they surely will soon) needs to be shot on sight.

 

damn... guess he won't be getting a christmas card from the Satans next year....

the good ol' boy NFL hiring network frowns on coaches who give up... did you enjoy the shot at the NFL you've been using as leverage for your whole career, Nick? It won't come your way again...

 

LeBatard just brought it. Can we trade him for old what's-his-name from Kansas City on this board?