Nick Saban’s wife wanted out of Miami

Happy wife, happy life.

That just may have been the case for former Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban and why the now highly successful University of Alabama coach left even after he said he wouldn’t.

As reported by Hal Habib of the Palm Beach Post, a new book by Monte Burke, senior editor for ForbesLife and staff writer at Forbes, detailed Saban’s time in Miami in the unofficial biography entitled: “Saban: The Making of a Coach.”

Dolphins fans don’t need a reminder of Saban’s tenure or departure from the team. However, it was a simple house remodeling that got the whole fiasco started.

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Sabban hired Chuck Moore to perform the remodel of his lake home in Georgia. Moore’s uncle, Mal Moore, was the athletic director of Alabama. Chuck Moore acted as a middleman between the Sabans and his uncle even though Mal Moore was practically knocking down Saban’s door to hire him.

Despite making his infamous “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach” remark, Saban called Chuck Moore and told him that he was interested in taking the Alabama job. This, in turn, would lead Chuck Moore to tell his uncle.

Another interesting turn is that Saban refused to take the Alabama AD’s phone calls, but Mal Moore did have discussions with Saban’s agent, Jimmy Sexton and wife, Terry Saban. Sexton is also Ndamukong Suh‘s agent, small world huh?

Sexton told Mal Moore that Saban found a coaching opportunity at Alabama appealing. Then Moore got his checkmate when Terry Saban invited him over to the Sabans’ Fort Lauderdale home for dinner. She told Moore that Saban was miserable in Miami and wanted to be a college coach again. She also told him that she wanted to leave Miami as well.

ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio revealed a little more of the rationale from the book.

"“In the NFL, the coach’s wife had no real role in the community,” Burke writes. “On a college campus – especially at a place like Alabama – the coach’s wife was a figure of prominence, a queen bee.”"

Back in Davie, then-owner Wayne Huizenga and Nick Saban reached some kind of agreement that Saban wasn’t going to leave. Later, Saban called his wife and told her he didn’t want to meet Moore. However, she told him that she’d already invited the Alabama AD to dinner.

At the dinner, Moore offered Saban an eight-year, $32 million deal, but Saban was tentative. That’s when the wife intervened, according to Florio.

"“As Moore was leaving, Terry pulled him aside and told him they they had to find a way to get her husband on the plane to Tuscaloosa the next day,” Burke writes."

When Saban returned to Davie the next day, attitudes had changed with Huizenga, according to Habib. That’s when the former Dolphins owner knew he was going to lose his head coach and gave Saban his blessing.

Since then, Saban has returned the Crimson Tide to a national powerhouse, but his time in Miami was mired in off the field and just plain awful practice moments.

Saban got into heated arguments with Keith Traylor and Zach Thomas, got angry when the wrong kind of Little Debbie cakes were at his delivered to his office, and stepped over offensive lineman Jeno James after he collapsed while suffering from convulsions. James was airlifted off the field to a hospital.

Those are some examples as to why Saban just couldn’t cut it as an NFL head coach. That, and how he drafted and the decision to sign QB Daunte Culpepper over Drew Brees. Talent evaluation is huge and Saban just couldn’t do that on a large scale.

At Alabama, Saban can just big league players with obvious NFL ambitions into committing to Alabama. It doesn’t take a lot of coercing to get a high school football player to join the Crimson Tide – even when they were struggling – the school’s legacy is huge.

The entire saga is detailed in a chapter entitled “Miami Vice” and the unofficial biography is due out on Aug. 4, 2015 for Dolphins fans who want to read just that chapter really quick at a Barnes and Noble or actually want to buy it.

Do these new revelations change your opinion of Nick Saban? Or do you think he’s an even bigger jerk now? Let the Saban hate flow through you in the comment section below. Or you could defend the man too, but seriously who’s going to do that?