Exploring the Nick Saban butterfly effect, 400-plus job changes later: ‘You better be prepared’

At approximately 3:53 p.m. CT on Jan. 10, Nick Saban sized up what had been another busy day inside the Alabama football office. He and his staff had spent much of their day interviewing three prospective assistants: two wide receivers coaches and a special teams coach. The third of the interviews, with Washington receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard, had just concluded.

“I think the guy from Washington is probably our best hire,” Saban told the Alabama coaches. “Let’s keep doing our due diligence, and then we’ll talk about it in the morning.’”

At 4 p.m., Saban and the group would reconvene for a team meeting. Within 10 minutes, he would inform everyone in the room – some 150 players and staffers – he was retiring, ending a coaching career that included seven national titles, 11 SEC championships and saw 27 assistants go on to become FBS head coaches and 10 more get NFL head coaching jobs.

“Man, it was a weird day, like ‘Twilight Zone’ weird,” said Zach Mettenberger, then an Alabama analyst. “Like two minutes into the meeting, not even, he just dropped a friggin’ nuke on all of us. He just kinda dropped the mic and walked out.”

Saban had two speeches written: one to retire and one to keep going. “I kept vacillating back and forth,” Saban later told ESPN. At 3:55, he was sitting in his chair, looking at the clock. “You have five minutes to decide which speech you’re gonna give.”

The speech he gave rocked the football world, particularly the lives of 423 coaches and staffers whose jobs would be impacted by the coaching dominoes that would begin to fall from his retirement.

Five more major college football programs needed new head coaches as a result of Alabama’s hire. The impact ultimately spread to 38 Power 5 schools, 25 Group of 5 schools, 34 lower-level programs, more than a dozen high schools and 10 NFL organizations.

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The Crimson Tide’s head nutritionist since 2010, Amy Bragg won five national titles with Saban. Only head trainer Jeff Allen and Dr. Ginger Gilmore, the Tide’s director of behavioral medicine, worked with Saban longer.

Alabama had built up one of the largest coaching and support staffs in the country, with more than 75 staffers listed in its 2023 directory. Saban’s decision left each of them – even his closest allies – wondering whether they’d have a role in the powerhouse program moving forward.

“We were all probably unprepared even though we knew that day was coming when it would be over,” Bragg said. “As it sunk in, I thought a lot about Coach Saban’s quotes: Control what you can control. Play the next play.”

Clint Trickett was in Tampa at Jon Gruden’s “Fired Football Coaches of America” headquarters when he heard the Saban news. Trickett’s dad, Rick, was a colleague of Saban’s in the 1970s at West Virginia and was on Saban’s first LSU staff.

“I was like, ‘F—!’” said Trickett, who was looking for work after getting released as Marshall’s offensive coordinator. “I was disappointed because one of my career goals was to work under him as a position coach. I’d been a (graduate assistant) for him for a short period of time — for eight work days — and when I left him to go work for Lane (Kiffin), it was a big deal. I really wanted to work for Nick Saban. It was a sad, sad day.”

Kane Wommack, the head coach at South Alabama, was preparing steaks as he and assistant head coach Matt Shadeed planned spring practices. Before the steaks hit the grill, Shadeed blurted out, “Oh my gosh! Nick Saban has retired.”

Wommack immediately felt a pit in his stomach. “I remember thinking, ‘I just hope nothing changes with my program,’” he said.

The next morning, Kalen DeBoer called Wommack. The two coaches were assistants at Indiana in 2019, when the Hoosiers cracked the Top 25 for the first time in 25 years. DeBoer had just led Washington to the national championship game in his second season as head coach, a turnaround that had gotten the attention of Alabama brass.

He wanted Wommack’s insights about the Tide’s program. Would he be a good fit?

When the offer was on the table, DeBoer asked: Is this something you would want to be a part of? Wommack had led South Alabama to its first two winning seasons and bowl victory as an FBS program, but sustaining success, he felt, was much harder at the Group of 5 level than it was when he took the job in 2021 because of the evolution of NIL and the transfer portal. When you’re the defensive coordinator at Alabama, he reasoned, you can succeed every year.

“It just wasn’t an opportunity I was gonna turn down,” Wommack said. “It happened fast.”

Everything did.

After Saban left the Wednesday team meeting, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne told the Tide that he would have a new head coach in place within 72 hours. Byrne made the hire in 49 hours, naming DeBoer as Saban’s successor. On Monday afternoon, DeBoer shook up the coaching carousel again, hiring Wommack.

Four days after it played for a national title, Washington needed a new leader.

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“What a week!” Jedd Fisch said as he walked down the halls of the Arizona football office the day Saban retired.

One of his mentors, Pete Carroll, had stepped down from the Seahawks the previous day after 14 seasons. Fisch expected his former boss Bill Belichick to part ways with New England the next day. Fisch didn’t think the Saban news would impact him. When Alabama hired DeBoer on Friday, Fisch figured Washington would go with DeBoer’s longtime assistant, offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, as his successor.

Washington athletic director Troy Dannen had only been in Seattle for three months. Locking DeBoer into a long-term extension was imperative. The Huskies were 5-0 when he arrived and just kept winning. Dannen made a strong offer the week of Thanksgiving starting at $8.5 million per year, an unprecedented figure for UW. When that was rejected, Dannen spent much of December preparing a list of candidates.

Fisch wasn’t atop that initial list despite achieving a remarkable flip in Tucson, taking over a program on a 12-game losing streak and winning 10 games by Year 3. But when the job opened in January and Dannen started making calls, he was quickly won over.

Their first conversation, a half-hour call, took place around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. By 10 p.m., Dannen was ready to offer him the job.

The Huskies’ impending move to the Big Ten in 2024 was, for Fisch, the No. 1 factor.

Fisch said it was clear Washington was willing to make a “huge” commitment to football. Arizona’s salary pool for its football assistants was $4.3 million in 2023. Washington almost doubled that to $7.3 million. He offered jobs at Washington to 21 Arizona staffers and all 21 accepted. But he still had room for a few new faces.

Steve Belichick watched how Fisch transformed Arizona. The two coached together on his father’s staff in New England. Belichick, 37, had spent all 12 of his years in coaching with the Patriots, the last four as New England’s defensive play caller. If someone had told him a month before his father left the Patriots that he would become a college coach, he says he’d have rolled his eyes.

“I don’t think I would’ve believed it,” said Belichick, now the Huskies’ defensive coordinator, “but things happen.”

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Over at South Alabama, Wommack’s sudden departure was a stunner. The Jaguars had just earned their first bowl victory in program history. Players didn’t see the change coming and needed continuity.

“They were, to use a boxing example, catching a flurry and on the ropes,” said Major Applewhite, Wommack’s offensive coordinator.

Applewhite was quickly promoted to take over at South Alabama. He has Saban to thank for that and much more. He was Saban’s first OC at Alabama in 2007 and rebooted his career in Tuscaloosa as an analyst in 2019 after his abrupt firing as Houston’s head coach.

“He’s always helped me whenever I’ve asked,” Applewhite said. “I don’t try to abuse that or be a nuisance. But there’s been times where I’ve called him since I’ve gotten this head job and asked him questions.”

He could’ve left for more high-profile OC jobs during his time with Wommack, but Applewhite and his family like Mobile, Ala., and were tired of moving. He didn’t want to ask his daughter to switch high schools.

Applewhite had to rebuild his staff, hiring five new assistant coaches while promoting two more. After losing DC Corey Batoon to Missouri, he brought back Will Windham, who’d been fired by Wommack in December and had just accepted a job at Arkansas State.

Windham spent one week recruiting for the Red Wolves but hadn’t signed a contract. He had already put the family home on the market and had three showings. On the Friday morning that Applewhite called, his wife was en route to Arkansas to go house hunting.

“It was a crazy three-hour span of, ‘We’re moving to Jonesboro, Ark.,’” Windham said, “to, ‘Holy smokes, get the house off the market, I’m gonna be the defensive coordinator at South Alabama.’”

A coach’s fortune can change in an instant. Pete Lembo was recruiting in New Jersey when he learned Buffalo head coach Maurice Linguist was leaving after a 3-9 season to become Alabama’s co-DC. Lembo had a 112-65 career record in 15 years as a Division I coach, but the South Carolina special teams coordinator hadn’t run his own program in almost a decade. The 54-year-old was beginning to doubt he’d get another shot.

“I remember getting a call from a search firm guy,” Lembo said. “He said, ‘You would be a great candidate for this job, but you guys were 5-7 this year. If it was last year when you were 8-4, you’d probably be getting an interview right now.’ Those are things you can’t control. You say to yourself, ‘I’m the same guy I was when we were 8-4.’”

The New York native said he had an “aha moment” when Buffalo opened. He was the right man for the job, an experienced former MAC coach who could ensure a smooth transition. The process moved quickly with AD Mark Alnutt, and it needed to with the start of the semester fast approaching. In his first week on the job, Lembo held meetings with all 87 players.

“It was real important for me to come in and be very steady and even-keeled,” Lembo said, “and let everybody know this is gonna be OK.”

Applewhite hired Paul Petrino to coach South Alabama’s receivers. Central Michigan replaced him with B.T. Sherman from Morgan State, who then brought in Apollo Wright as its new offensive coordinator.

And that meant Mike Woodard needed to find a new head coach for the Fernandina Beach Pirates.

Fernandina Beach, Fla., is tucked away in northeast Florida next to the Georgia border, a tourist destination on Amelia Island. Their high school program has good support, an indoor practice facility and a renovated weight room but one playoff win in school history. Wright, a college assistant for 20-plus years, went 7-13 over his two seasons. Woodard, their AD and dean of students, knew Wright wanted to give college one more shot.

Bobby Dan McGlohorn, who had head coaching experience in North Florida and was an assistant across the state line at Camden County in Kingsland, Ga., accepted the job but backed out a few weeks later. Woodard turned to Blake Willis.

The 33-year-old has been the Pirates’ defensive coordinator and strength coach for five years while also teaching PE weight lifting classes. He grew up and went to school there. Fernandina Beach’s last consecutive winning seasons were his junior and senior year.

There was a time when Willis considered working at the college level. He interned with South Carolina’s strength and conditioning staff in the summer of 2018 and worked for UCF’s staff in 2018-19 while pursuing his master’s degree. While he learned so much from coaches now at Tennessee and other Power 5 schools, he was reluctant to go down that road.

“I didn’t know if I wanted to move around a whole lot, because that’s kind of the deal,” Willis said. “Every few years, you’re probably having to find a new job.”

Willis never thought he would become a head coach this quickly. Woodard has reservations, too, but talked him into applying. When the AD interrupted a team workout to announce the new coach, his players celebrated.

“I’m trying to build it up to where I think it should be,” Willis said. “This is where I’m from. I want this place to be the best it can be.”

The coaching moves set off by Saban’s retirement rippled out to high schools in nine other states, too. Mettenberger, the Alabama analyst and former LSU and NFL quarterback, accepted an OC role at Father Ryan High School, a private school in Nashville. The process of looking for another coaching job late in the cycle was daunting, and the 32-year-old coach didn’t have an agent.

“We planned on moving back to Nashville, because it was more conducive to my wife’s work and I was just gonna figure it out, whether it be selling insurance for the next year until the next coaching cycle,” Mettenberger said. “The coordinator at Father Ryan left for a job in Georgia, and with my prior experience there and my situation moving back, it happened organically. I was real lucky.”

Clint Trickett was fortunate, too. Three months after being let go by Marshall, he was hired to coach inside receivers and tight ends at Georgia Southern. That spot came open after DeBoer hired Georgia Southern OC Bryan Ellis as Alabama’s tight ends coach. Ryan Aplin, who had the job Trickett was taking, got promoted to replace Ellis, who got looped in at Alabama by his old buddy from his Western Kentucky days, JaMarcus Shephard, DeBoer’s receivers coach at Washington that Saban had interviewed 10 minutes before he retired. Shepherd ended up in Tuscaloosa after all, as the Tide’s wide receivers coach.

Willis and Woodard chuckled upon learning their connection to Alabama. “It’s definitely insane,” Willis said. “I would’ve never thought.” How would Woodard like to be in Byrne’s shoes, tasked with selecting Saban’s successor?

“You know, everyone has their own speed bumps and potholes,” Woodard said. “I’m perfectly fine right now just covering mine with beach sand.”

Arizona hired Brent Brennan and San Jose State hired Ken Niumatalolo to replace him. Coincidentally, he’d already met his new team four weeks earlier.

The veteran coach was back home in Hawaii in December. His good friend Joe Seumalo, San Jose State’s defensive line coach, was in town and wanted to catch up. He asked if he could watch a practice as the Spartans prepped for the Hawaii Bowl.

“Brent Brennan is a good dude and was like, ‘Ken, do you wanna speak to the team?’ I said sure,” Niumatalolo said. “I talked about how I was impressed with how close their team was. It was evident Coach had done a really good job of creating a family atmosphere. I wished them the best of luck.

“I’m a very spiritual person. Things are sometimes meant to be.”

Niumatalolo was fired in the locker room after Navy’s double overtime loss to rival Army in 2022, an abrupt end to a successful 15-year tenure. Plenty of friends offered him jobs, but could he go back to being an assistant? Niumatalolo joked that he wasn’t quite ready to grind like the countless fired coaches who became Alabama analysts under Saban.

Chip Kelly got creative and offered him a new advisory role: UCLA’s director of leadership. No coaching, no recruiting. Niumatalolo sat in on meetings, watched practice and took copious notes on how to run a Power 5 program. The 59-year-old coach shared an apartment with his son Ali’i, UCLA’s offensive line GA.

“It was a way for me to stay in the game and learn from Chip,” Niumatalolo said. “It turned out it was a perfect job for me. … I didn’t realize I needed that to decompress. It allowed me to touch every part of that program and see it for myself.”

He spent the year putting together a plan with the hopes he’d get a call at the end of the season. Niumatalolo knew he needed to move away from Navy’s option offense and studied passing attacks. He filled up his iPad with ideas for his next program. When a job didn’t emerge, he agreed to coach UCLA’s tight ends. And then Saban retired.

“The way this happened was weird, because it was so late,” Niumatalolo said. “I don’t know if that will ever happen again. None of us have ever seen that, how all these different dominoes fell.”

He’d been involved in quite a few searches in past years, so he knew how fast they were filled. When Brennan landed his dream job at Arizona, Niumatalolo got a call from his agent, then a Zoom meeting, then an in-person interview the next day. “You better be prepared,” Niumatalolo said.

He landed Texas State’s Craig Stutzmann and his “Spread and Shred” system on offense, retained DC Derrick Odum and brought Nu’u Tafisi from UCLA as his strength coach. He trusted them to fill out their staffs while he took more of a CEO approach, building relationships with donors to boost NIL funding.

“I can’t do a lot of things well, but I know how to be a head coach,” he said. “I can’t use a hammer. I suck at computers. I don’t know how to fix a tire. But I know how to lead people.”

When Lembo brought one of his former grad assistants, Brian Dougherty, to Buffalo as his safeties coach, Mike Caputo was out of a job.

The 31-year-old assistant, a three-year starter and All-American at Wisconsin, had worked at five schools in seven years. Caputo lived out of his Dodge Charger for six months after landing a GA job at LSU in 2017. He put in two years there with Dave Aranda before reuniting with Gary Andersen as safeties coach at Utah State. Caputo took a pay cut to join Aranda’s Baylor staff as a quality control coach in 2020. He accepted another off-field role at his alma mater in 2022 and watched Paul Chryst get fired at midseason.

“I tried to develop as many relationships as possible, didn’t burn any bridges and just always chased opportunity and not money,” he said.

Caputo could’ve stayed with Wisconsin but felt ready for his next step. He got on at Buffalo as safeties coach and special teams coordinator. His wife, Lauren, was pregnant with their second child but signed off on the move. Their daughter, Vera, arrived 11 days after they landed in Buffalo.

Nine months later, Caputo was in an airport bar trying to rebook a flight canceled by a snowstorm when he learned Linguist was leaving. There weren’t many jobs available by late January. He exhausted all his connections.

In April, the Caputos moved to Pittsburgh. Mike came home to join his father’s commercial insurance agency. This isn’t a hiatus. He’s decided to get out of coaching.

“I’m not sour about it,” he said. “Shoot, it’s been a blessing.”

Caputo believes he’s out for good. He was already becoming frustrated by how much assistant jobs have changed. “Now you’re only coaching 20 percent of the time,” he said. “The majority is recruiting. That’s not why I got in. I got in to coach and develop young men.” For Caputo, it was validating to hear Saban make similar observations upon retiring.

Dozens of coaches and staffers impacted by Saban’s decision found themselves in similar predicaments. These newly hired head coaches had to make difficult decisions about who to bring, who to keep and who’s out. At Alabama, DeBoer brought Washington nutritionist Ali VandenBerghe and moved on from Bragg, ending her 14-season tenure. She’s now in the consulting business, relying on her two decades of leading college football nutrition programs.

Daniel Bush, Alabama’s recruiting director since 2018, wasn’t retained and wasn’t looking to move his family across the country. He stayed in Tuscaloosa and has launched a recruiting service to help high school prospects. Bush proudly said he didn’t miss a single Little League game this spring. He won’t miss the 85-hour work weeks from August through December.

“At the end of the day, winning takes what it takes,” Bush said. “We were all willing to invest what it took to get it done.”

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Just before spring break, Cisco College defensive coordinator Charlie Rizzio was on his way out of the office when he got stopped by his head coach.

Stephen Lee told Rizzio that he was about to accept an offer to coach tight ends at FCS program Tarleton State and that he would recommend Cisco hire Rizzio as his successor. It’s his first college head coaching gig.

“I guess I’ve got ole’ Nick to thank for that,” Rizzio joked when he learned of his six degrees of separation from Saban.

Rizzio, a former Division II running back at Assumption College, has spent his adult life coaching at places the average fan has never heard of.

At 30, with six years of high school coaching experience to his name, Rizzio wanted to try the college level. But his connections were sparse, so in 2014 he emailed his resume to every college he could think of. When Division II West Texas A&M responded it needed a running backs coach, Rizzio jumped in his Hyundai on a Friday and drove 1,800 miles cross-country to Canyon, Texas.

When he arrived at the football offices Monday morning, he beat all but one coach there: Lee, who was then the offensive coordinator there. Nobody there had a clue who Rizzio was. The head coach had forgotten they had spoken. But he hired Rizzio as a graduate assistant on the spot.

That kicked off a decade-long coaching journey for Rizzio at schools like Eastern New Mexico, Southern Connecticut State and Missouri Western. He has driven thousands of miles, blown two car engines, and didn’t make enough money to pay off his student loans until he was 36.

When Lee was announced last year as the new head coach at Cisco, Rizzio was one of his first calls as defensive coordinator. “He’s a problem solver,” Lee said. “He looks around to figure out what needs to be done.”

Rizzio, then substitute teaching in Connecticut, had only three requests for his next gig: health insurance, enough salary to live without a roommate and enrollment in the Texas Teacher Retirement System, a statewide pension program for school employees.

“I told him, ‘If you can check those three boxes, I don’t care where it is,’” Rizzio said.

The Wranglers went 4-4 in Lee’s and Rizzio’s first year together and were encouraged by the potential. Cisco, roughly 100 miles west of Fort Worth in a town of 4,000, doesn’t have the resources that other programs in the Southwest Junior College Football Conference have. But the coaches made it work.

In January, DeBoer hired Baylor offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic to the same job at Alabama. Baylor coach Dave Aranda recruited Mason Miller from Tarleton State to fill the void. Tarleton coach Todd Whitten made two moves to fill the vacancy left by Miller, his offensive coordinator and tight end coach: He promoted quarterbacks coach Adam Austin to OC and called Lee from Cisco to be the tight ends coach.

The funding and ambition at Tarleton was too attractive to pass up for Lee. And he knew Cisco would be in good hands with Rizzio.

The first-time head coach has plenty of work ahead of him. In junior college football, the coaching staff sizes and facilities may as well be on a different planet when compared to what Saban had at Alabama.

“You’re gonna have to wash some jock straps and you can’t be too prideful to do that,” Rizzio said. “You’re gonna have to clean the dorms, take the trash out, do grade checks, do breakfast checks, run the weight room.”

But he’s not complaining. He loves coaching and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He knows there are coaches paid exponentially more who are “miserable.” He’s the opposite.

Rizzio appreciates the small-town community and says the people of Cisco are “amazing.” He tells his team to imagine they’re not waking up in Cisco, but in Tuscaloosa, preparing for the Iron Bowl.

“You can find happiness anywhere,” Rizzio said. “Everyone’s got problems. Even Nick Saban has problems. He’s just got Mercedes-Benz problems, and we have Hyundai problems.”

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; graphics: John Bradford, Drew Jordan / The Athletic; photo: Tim Warner / Getty Images)