Already On The Hot Seat, Butch Jones & Bret Bielema
With all the effects Nick Saban’s success at Alabama has had on other SEC schools, this potential one might be the most bizarre.
Is the standard Saban has set at Alabama so high that others coaches in the league are beginning to crack?
Based on the past few days, it seems as if that might be the case. In fact, it’s like they are even carrying acetylene torches to further light their hot seats.
Bret Bielema cried in his post-game press conference (Arkansas fans were doing more than crying, by the way, after Bielema’s Arkansas Hogs lost for the seventh straight time to Texas A&M). Butch Jones had a mental meltdown in his Monday press conference, saying other schools recruit on “fake news” generated by the media.
Even Jim McElwain, who should feel a bit of self confidence after winning the last two SEC East championships but always seems to be spooked by something over his shoulder, sounds as if he’s on the verge of a breakdown. In his post-game on-the-field interview after the Gators survived Kentucky he sounded so nervous he could barely speak.
Two days later, he was the same in what we in the media term a “softball” interview with Paul Finebaum. McElwain knows winning isn’t enough for the fans; you’ve got to win in a dominant, Saban type of style.
It is ironic – as well as a bit comedic – that the one coach who should have broken down was the calmest of them all. After his team was drilled 59-0 by Alabama, Derek Mason said the message to his team this week would be to “make sure those guys understand the difference between ideal self and real self. And real self is 59 to zip.”
For Jones and Bielema, this behavior is hardly an aberration. In fact, it’s practically a weekly occurrence for Jones.
Bielema mumbles his way through press conferences so often you have to feel for the writers covering the team who have try and figure out what he said, which is pretty much not anything anyway.
Kevin Sumlin and Gus Malzahn, by the way, are wisely laying low this week. But they are just one nasty loss away from joining Jones and Bielema.
You think any of them “want Bama?”
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