Roy Exum: "Rat Poison Worse Than Ever" Claims Alabama’s Saban

  • Saturday, September 3, 2022
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

Every expert on Alabama football – and believe me there are well over a million strong – will tell you the top-ranked Crimson Tide is the greatest collection of college talent ever assembled. Each will tell you that the 41-point spread the bookies are giving Utah State in tonight's game in Tuscaloosa isn’t nearly enough and they are probably right.

Yet the mastermind behind the juggernaut openly scoffs at such talk. Oh, Nick Saban won’t deny it a bit but he calls such talk “rat poison” and, with all the fervor of a Deep South evangelist, the coach then admonishes one and all with the promise, “Rat poison will kill you!”

On his Thursday night call-in radio show, he continued his steady rant from last year, “I think the rat poison this year, not to bring up a sore subject, I mean, it’s worse than ever,” he said.

“I’ve had more people ask me, ‘How we’re going to do against Texas this week than how we’re going to do against Utah State.

“I’m like, ‘We don’t play Texas this week!’ So I’m like, ‘What are you thinking about?’ Then I go to church on Sunday and the sermon is, ‘He who exults himself will be humbled. He who humbles himself will be exulted.’ So it’s almost like, if you put rat poison in that same thing, it almost fits perfectly -- perfectly! It’s crazy.”

Saban, whose team will be a double-digit favorite at Texas next Saturday, constantly frets his players will read press clippings or watch any TV and become smitten with themselves. Cocky arrogance has gotten more teams upset than any rat poison every could.

Towards the end of the radio show he brought it up again. “I mentioned it earlier, there’s more rat poison around than I’ve ever seen before,” he said. “And our fans cannot be that way. If you want to be fans, you need to support the team. You need to have energy and enthusiasm, support the players. They work hard. You go to the game. You’re not always disappointed because you have this great expectation that we’re gonna win the game, 50-0.

“Hey, these are young players that are working hard to try to be the best they can be. They need to be supported. They need your energy and enthusiasm. That helps them maintain their kind of motivation that’s going to help them no matter where we are get better for the future,” he said.

“So I encourage everybody to be positive and create a legacy for what we want to do this season. And you contribute to it in a positive way, not in what I read these guys write all the time about, ‘How can Alabama run the table.’ Can’t you figure out something better to do than that? I mean, c’mon.”

* * *

ESPN REPORTS PLAYOFFS TO EXPAND TO 12 TEAMS

The College Football Playoff's board of managers voted Friday to expand the CFP to 12 teams in 2026, but is encouraging the sport's commissioners to try to implement it as soon as 2024, multiple sources told ESPN.

The 11 presidents and chancellors comprising the board approved the original 12-team model, which includes the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams. The 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet next week in Dallas to figure out the details.

The CFP board held a 2 p.m. ET conference call and the vote was unanimous, a source told ESPN. The major holdup to the 12-team model had been specific objections from the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12. After the thunderbolt of realignment this summer with USC and UCLA committing to the Big Ten and that conference signing a historic television deal, the issues from those leagues began to fade into the background.

royexum@aol.com

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