Editor's note: A version of this story originally ran Aug. 19, 2016. It has been republished following news that Nick Saban will retire.
It's the day before New Year's Eve in Memphis, Tennessee, and no one from Ohio State wants what's about to happen. The team that tied for the Big Ten championship and is ranked 15th in the AP Poll has somehow wound up stuck in the 1981 Liberty Bowl. The matchup against unranked Navy isn't inspiring. The weather isn't even nice: 30 degrees at kickoff with rain on the way. The coaching staff can see it in some of the players' eyes that they don't want to be there, struggling to find their footing, slipping on the turf as well as their pride.
A long season is about to get longer. Ohio State is supposed to beat Navy handily, but it doesn't work out that way. The Buckeyes' struggling young secondary hits a new low, allowing an offense that couldn't muster more than 50 passing yards per game during the regular season to amass 240 yards and two touchdowns through the air. A blocked punt and three fumbles save the Buckeyes from embarrassment. Final score: Ohio State 31, Navy 28.
Coach Earle Bruce is already fuming over his team's sloppy play as he leaves the field when he sees that his defensive coordinator, Dennis Fryzel, is speaking with reporters. Defensive line coach Steve Szabo would later call it the straw the broke the camel's back. Bruce storms into the locker room, throwing things, yelling, "That's it! It's over! It's done!"
It's sometime around 2 a.m. when the team makes it back to Columbus. Only the coaches are summoned back to the office at 8 a.m. for a meeting. Thirty seconds in, Bruce breaks the news: the entire defensive staff is through. Everyone is stunned. After all, as linebackers coach Bob Tucker put it, "We'd just won a bowl game" and finished 9-3.
Nick Saban has just been fired for the first time in his career. He's suddenly a 30-year-old, unemployed defensive backs coach. He has a tireless work ethic, a mind for complex coverages and an eye for evaluating talent, yet he has nowhere to use it.
It won't stay that way for long. The greatest college football coach of his generation will never face the chopping block again.
* * *
Nick Saban was already on his fourth coaching stop by the time he arrived at Ohio State in 1980. Defensive coordinator Dennis Fryzel, an old friend from their Syracuse days, and offensive coordinator Glen Mason, whom he had gotten to know on the recruiting trail, had pitched coach Earle Bruce to bring him on. He was bright, they told Bruce, and an excellent recruiter, the perfect man to replace Pete Carroll, who had just left to become defensive coordinator at N.C. State.
Defensive line coach Steve Szabo remembers Saban well. Back then, all the defensive assistants shared an office. Saban wasn't very outgoing, Szabo said, but he could see that he took coaching seriously. He and linebackers coach Bob Tucker would joke that while they spoke to Saban they could feel he was "calculating something else." He was constantly working the phones, calling NFL buddies to talk shop. One such friend was Bill Belichick, an assistant with the New York Giants.
Mason still marvels at how Saban was on the cutting edge. The Cover 2 was the craze and Saban was installing multiple looks within the defense that gave Mason fits. What looked like a blitz wasn't. Cover 2 would turn into a Cover 3 in the blink of an eye. But what Mason valued most was Saban's ability to spot talent. Firing up the old 60mm film, he'd say, "Nick, take a look at this guy and tell me what you think." Saban would study the tape and Mason would always follow his recommendation. "And he was always right," Mason said. "To be quite honest with you, it was things I didn't think of, didn't see or didn't evaluate."
Although Ohio State went 9-3 in 1980 and the defense gave up a respectable 162 passing yards per game, the ground was shifting. The middle and bottom of the Big Ten was becoming more of a passing league. During a 49-42 win over Illinois, the Buckeyes allowed 621 yards through the air.
What's more, the secondary was expected to enter rebuilding mode the next season. In the team's own media guide, the defensive backfield was described as "totally new." The situation was "further clouded" by the loss of one of its most experienced returnees, Rod Gorley, who had knee surgery, it read. Against Stanford in Week 3, the defense allowed 280 passing yards and two touchdowns to some quarterback named John Elway. The next week, Florida State threw for 299 yards and two touchdowns in a 9-point loss, the first of the season.
Tucker said the personnel in the secondary didn't match the changing needs on defense. A staff meeting late in the year ended in what Tucker described as "misunderstanding" between Saban and Bruce over recruiting tactics.
"Of course, every high school coach in America has another Jack Tatum -- a strong safety, a hitter," Tucker said. "Well you have eight Jack Tatums and you're on the ropes. Nick's message was, 'Let's get some Tim Andersons -- some more pass defenders since this thing is changing.'
"I understood what Nick was saying, and I'm not sure the head coach did."
What's more, Saban pushed to install more sophisticated defenses and Bruce wasn't eager to play ball.
Meanwhile, there was a growing friction between Bruce and Fryzel. The two were close friends, but miles apart in terms of personality. Where Bruce was more buttoned up, Szabo said Fryzel went by the "seat of his pants." Fryzel was becoming a second voice of the program and that didn't sit well with Bruce, Tucker said.
"I'm trying to say this diplomatically," Mason said, calling it a situation that escalated out of control. "There was a working relationship problem with Denny and Earle."
Said Szabo: "Nick was thrown in the mix because he outwardly was more loyal to Denny."
As the season went on, Tucker remembers the newspapers "blasting us." Then the leaks came with things showing up in the press that should have stayed in staff meetings, Szabo recalled. Bruce's response was to shut down assistants from speaking with reporters.
Fryzel broke the embargo at the wrong time after the Liberty Bowl. All three former assistants who spoke for this story agreed that Bruce was acting on emotion when he stormed into the locker room that night and fired the defensive staff the next morning.
"It was collateral damage," Mason said. "It wasn't because the secondary wasn't playing well, [Saban] wasn't recruiting well or he wasn't doing his job well."
Saban didn't say anything when it happened. He didn't throw anything or pout.
Later that day, Bruce offered to retain Tucker. Tucker said he appreciated it when Saban told him, "You have to stay. You have a family."
Saban immediately moved on. He was content, according to Szabo.
The pair went to a coaches convention less than two weeks later. Saban already had a job lined up to join Belichick's father on the staff at Navy.
All these years later, Tucker remembers picking Bruce up at the airport after a trip to Hawaii for the Hula Bowl. The dust had finally settled. In the car, he said Bruce asked him, "Why did I do that?"
* * *
Seven national championships later, Saban stands alone, arguably the best college football coach of his generation.
And if you think he's forgotten about his departure from Ohio State, think again. When Saban was asked about what he learned from the whole ordeal, he first pointed out that the entire staff was let go, not just him.
"It was a little bit of a crazy deal," he said, "but I look back more on the mistakes that I made rather than blaming somebody else."
He may be a grandfather now with some grey around the ears, but Saban remembers it all. He remembers going on Bruce's TV show after they beat Michigan. He remembers the game, the three freshmen and a sophomore who started in the secondary. He fondly recalls shutting down Michigan's All-America receiver to the tune of three passes for 17 yards. (Anthony Carter had 4 catches for 52 yards, but close enough.)
A month later, he remembers being fired.
"What it made me realize is that you have to work to please the person that you're working for," he explained. "I really look back at all of the things that I did, the mistakes that I made -- and even sometimes if you're right -- it's not worth it to be right."
Fryzel has since passed and Bruce is retired, recovering well from a stroke he sustained last year.
Tucker, Szabo and Mason are all out of coaching.
All of them could tell that Saban had what it took to be a head coach all those years ago, but none could have known he'd accomplish this.
"Who wouldn't be surprised?" Mason said. "Not only did he have success, he's had legendary success. I'm not sure how -- and I've been around a lot of good coaches -- but I don't know how you're able to say, 'Oh, I knew he'd win a championship at LSU and multiple ones at Alabama.' It's a perfect storm. You put a guy that's on the cutting edge of recruiting and coaching and works tremendously hard and put him at a school that has the ability to do those type of things. But still it's uncanny the success he's had."
Tucker laughed when he looked back on all of it, how Pete Carroll led to Nick Saban and Nick Saban led to Dom Capers at Ohio State.
It's funny how it works. Carroll has won titles in both college and the pros. Capers was a Super Bowl-winning defensive coordinator with the Packers. Saban has won seven college national championships. Yet they were all fired at one point in their lives.
"I tell people, 'Look at those guys,'" Tucker said. "And here I am practicing chipping on the green while the club is closed."