That's too bad. After an extremely rocky start as AD, he proved to be one of the nation's best...maybe THE best, in fact. Ironically, though, his lasting legacy will be built on a hire that he would not have made had it truly been his choice.
Creek, regarding Mal's choice, what you said is the way the press reported it at the time. However, the story came out after the hire of what actually went down behind closed doors. The first two choices were Saban and SOS. Mal knew that Saban would probably be looking at leaving the NFL after the season due to a call he received from his agent Jimmy Sexton after the MSU game. They knew he would not make any decision on what he would do until after the season. That was a drawback due to the need to get someone in asap due to recruiting. The decision was to pursue SOS, and he seemed very interested but in the end said he was too old to make another move and suggested we get someome younger.
Moore wanted to wait on Saban but the BOT said we had to get someone quickly again for recruiting reasons. Mal set a date to meet Rich Rod to discuss the job in a hotel in another city. What was not known was the day before he met with RR, he met Saban's agent at the very same hotel attempting the get a decision from Saban now. The agent was adament that wasn't going to happen as Saban was not going to consider anything until the NFL season ended. Next step was the offer, and eventual turn down by RR. At that point Moore convinced the BOT to wait for Saban's decision in January as the only legit candidate left was Petrino...he was next on the list. The BOT went with Mal's suggestion and eventually it paid off.
BG
