The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (77 page)

Nowhere was ESPN’s ubiquitous investment in live-event programming more complete or controlling than college football. It had at least $10 billion tied up in long-term rights deals with the SEC, Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Big East. It had $300 million more invested over twenty years in the Longhorn Network and hundreds of millions more in the new SEC Network. In 2012 it had aired some 450 regular- and postseason college football games across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes and other platforms. On Kickoff Week alone it aired forty-three games. It televised thirty-three bowl games and owned seven outright.

But nothing ESPN had done in the past compared with the deal president John Skipper announced in November 2012. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, the network had acquired wide-ranging media rights to the new four-team college football playoff for twelve years. In addition, ESPN had secured similar rights to the Rose, Sugar and Orange Bowls.

Burke Magnus was ESPN’s point man in negotiations with BCS executive director Bill Hancock. Magnus had steadily risen up ESPN’s editorial and programming ranks to senior vice president, responsible for the strategic direction of college football, basketball and NCAA championships across various ESPN platforms.

In talks with Hancock and key conference commissioners, Magnus had placed a premium on exclusivity. Translation: ESPN wanted the whole postseason-playoff enchilada. “Not knowing how big it was going to be or ultimately how many games it was going to be, the premium on exclusivity on something like this was paramount,” said Magnus in an interview shortly before the 2013 BCS championship game in Miami. “For us, it’s way more than a three and a half television window for the games. It underpins the regular season from a sales and sponsorship perspective. It’s the payoff for our investment in the regular season.”

Network sports executives had drooled over the prospect of a television sports event second only to the Super Bowl. Fox made clear it wanted in; so, surprisingly, did Turner; NBC less so. CBS, given its multibillion-dollar commitment to college basketball, the NFL, the SEC and the PGA, sat this one out. At one point, Magnus said, the notion was floated of splitting the seven-game postseason bowl and playoff package.

“I knew that was really problematic for us,” he said. “It completely undercuts the sales side.”

So Magnus put the network’s proverbial foot down. Hard. We want it all, he told Hancock. Eventually, industry sources said, ESPN put a huge number on the table, an estimated $610 million a year—$413 million for just the semifinals and the national championship game, an average of nearly $140 million
per game
for just three playoff games.

In June, at a meeting of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee in Washington, D.C., ESPN’s offer was put up to the twelve-person vote. Magnus felt optimistic. He had strong support from key conference commissioners. He was tired. Negotiations had lasted nine months. His phone rang. It was Hancock calling from the meeting. The decision was unanimous.

“It’s done,” he said.

GameDay
was done as well. It was early afternoon, and Fowler was once again stretched out in the back corner of the bus.

“Calvin Klein,” he said with a smile. “I don’t know where that comes from.”

Somebody said Corso wore Calvin Klein.

“I didn’t know that,” said Fowler. Pause. “I wish I didn’t know that.”

Sam Steele stopped by before heading out of town.

“Calvin Klein, that may have been one of the funniest things I …”

“It would have been worse if he said ‘Colon,’ ” said Fowler. With a big smile Steele likened Corso to a crazy grandpa everybody loved. Fowler agreed.

“I think people kind of watch for those moments anyway,” he said. “It just makes it more fun.”

As the Oklahoma–TCU game was coming down to the wire,
GameDay
’s quarterback judged 2012 as one of his favorite seasons. “I think Coach had a real strong year,” Fowler said. “He’s improved back from the stroke every year. Desmond and David’s work, the features, everyone has sort of shown up
energized
.”

Corso walked in and plopped down in the black leather chair next to Fowler. The Jovan Belcher murder-suicide story was breaking.
SportsCenter
anchor Rece Davis cut in with an update. Corso kept his eye on the Oklahoma game; he had picked the Sooners to win. He was still worked up over Klein—Collin, not Calvin—and how the K-State quarterback had been shoved out of the Heisman race after throwing three picks in a devastating loss to Baylor on the road that ended a 10-0 run.

“The fact is he only threw three other picks for the season,” said Corso.

“I understand that,” replied Fowler, “but the belief is it was a pressure game and he lost. They were ranked No. 1, and he went into the toilet.”

Corso was the first to admit he didn’t do much preparation for
GameDay
because, he said, “I lived the preparation.” Few of his viewers knew Corso had been a stud athlete in college, earning four varsity letters (baseball and football) at Louisville and Florida State, where he played quarterback, running back and defensive back for the Seminoles from 1953 to 1956. He owned FSU’s all-time interception record before it was broken in 1980. The old coach loved to dissect teams from the sidelines, forming the essence of his picks, like his upset special of A&M over Alabama.

He took a look at Fowler. Calvin Klein. Collin Klein. After more than fifty years as a player, coach and broadcaster, Lee Corso had more than a little left on
his
fastball.

“Yeah,” he said. “But you’re not going to win many games when the other team scores fifty-two.”

S
even years after the private plane touched down in Tuscaloosa and Nick Saban waded into an adoring crowd, he was nothing less than the game’s most powerful coach, a certified deity in certain parts of the South. Saban was being paid like a CEO, earning more than $5 million in salary, fees, bonuses and other perks and payments in 2012. When asked if he was worth that much money, Saban offered one of his slightly strained smiles, laughed, then said, “Probably not. Probably not. But I think on the other side of that is you almost have to look at what return has there been on that investment. So, we’re paying this guy a couple of million more than the last guy. But if we’re making a lot more because of it, then I guess that’s the value.”

Just how valuable has Saint Nick been to Alabama since the 2007 season? Let us count some of the ways:

Said Ben Sutton, the president of IMG College, “Whatever they’ve paid Nick has honestly been returned twentyfold.”

From his spot low on the totem pole, defensive analyst Wesley Neighbors rarely interacted with the man in charge. But he knew full well the weight of Saban’s expectations.

“Here,” said Neighbors, “detail is everything.”

For Neighbors that meant working seven days a week during the football calendar and sixty-plus hours during the season. He broke down upcoming opponents’ special teams video, thirty to thirty-five plays per game—every kickoff, kick return, punt, punt return, field goal and field goal defense—as many as seven or eight times each. His job was to identify and catalog tendencies and alignment, searching for the tiny details on which Saban game plans are constructed. “What’s their strong point? But more importantly, where are their weaknesses?” Neighbors explained. “Do they use certain personnel for certain things? That’s a big tendency. It’s almost like
I Spy
. It’s like trying to find that little small something that unlocks the key of what they do.”

By Sunday afternoon he would draw up schemes and plays and then organize them into a computerized scouting report created with another defensive analyst whose job mirrored Neighbors’s. That report was passed up the ladder to their immediate supervisor, special teams analyst John Wozniak. “The data has to be correct,” said Neighbors.

Once he had reviewed and refined the report, Wozniak would send the computer program to his boss, special teams coach Bobby Williams. It was up to Williams to shape that material into a specific plan to be scrutinized by Saban. Throughout the organization every single member of Saban’s staff was expected to operate in the exact same way. The Saban Way. Dig deep. Measure up. And even when you think you have …

“It’s the best when you walk in and you think you’re protected by the halo rule. I’m not going to get it today,” said Scott Cochran, the director of strength and conditioning who started with Saban at LSU. “Nah, you’re going to get it. As soon as you get comfortable …”

It all traced back to tiny Monongah, West Virginia, and a man known to everyone as Big Nick.

In 2013 only about a thousand people, mostly rural poor, lived in the former coal-mining town, site of the worst mining disaster in American history back in December 1907, when 362 miners died. Even by the standards of coal-mining country Nick Saban Sr. stood apart. He had a flinty edge and unmistakable appetite for perfection. He was a good-hearted man
who founded a Pop Warner team for kids in the neighboring towns, but he was as hard and tough as they come.

Nicholas Lou Saban was named after his father and a cousin, Lou, the longtime pro and college coach. By the time young Nick was eleven, he was working at his dad’s two businesses, Saban’s Dairy Queen and Saban’s Service Station, learning the
right
way to pump gas, clean a window, check the oil or wash a car.

“The biggest thing I learned … was how important it was to do things correctly,” Saban said at a national championship press conference in January 2013. “There was a standard of excellence, of perfection. If we washed a car … I hated the navy blue and black cars because when you wiped them off the streaks were hard to get out, and if there were any streaks when he came, you had to do it over.