The NFL Draft just got a whole lot more captivating, thanks to Nick Saban’s appearance as an ESPN analyst. The legendary former Alabama coach is bringing his encyclopedic football brain to primetime television, and it’s already paying massive dividends.
During Friday night’s second round coverage, Saban launched into an astounding soliloquy that blew the minds of viewers across the country. His topic? The mystifying, inexplicable quality of athletic instinct that separates the good from the generational greats.
Saban spun a dizzying word-web exploring the innate decision-making abilities of elite athletes. He deftly weaved examples from different sports, leaving jaws on floors everywhere.
First, Saban hit a line drive into the psyche of a batter: “You can teach a guy the mechanics of a swing and the strike zone. But not the preternatural sense of whether to swing at that particular pitch, when it’s barely left the pitcher’s hand.”
Then he went deep down the rabbit hole of a defensive back’s split-second choices: “Undercut for the pick? Knock it down with a vicious swipe? Or break down and secure the tackle? You can drill those techniques endlessly, but not the sublime intuition of which to deploy, at that infinitesimal moment of truth.”
Minds, consider yourselves blown. Saban’s stream of consciousness fur-ball of brilliance had everyone buzzing. The man quite literally speaks a higher dimensional language when it comes to unpacking what makes transcendent athletes just…tick differently.
Critics are already hailing this as the most insane, out-of-the-box sports commentary anyone can recall. Saban has smashed through the boundaries of coherent analysis into abstract, avant-garde poeticism.
You’d need a Cray supercomputer just to try modeling the neural networks firing in this savant’s giant brain. His soliloquy was utter metaphysics; the Nietzsche of jock philosophy holding court.
If ESPN was hoping for sizzling hot takes and pure, uncut content gasoline from their big hire, mission wildly accomplished. Saban has already secured his legacy as the L. Ron Hubbard of pigskin punditry. Forget X’s and O’s, we just watched the birth of a new Word Bible.
