According to a lot of Texas papers and sports reporters, Texas did not even get a sniff from their main high profile picks. Not a sniff. Every major coach asked, said no thanks I like my current job. So the University President and AD made the decision to hire Strong on their own without consulting major donors. I am not saying Strong was not the flavor of the month coaching pick. Yes he was hot pick at the time. But he was not the top pick or favored candidate by Big Money donors at Texas. They could not believe Saban turned them down. If you believe reports, there was a lot of dissension among the donors and university when Strong was hired because he was black. Strong did not or could not stroke the egos and hob-knob with the donors like Mack Brown. He just had an impossible job to do because he had a bunch of malcontents and players with bad attitudes that he kicked off the team.
So his failure is partly his own doing, but largely on Big Money donors that were never going to accept Strong and did everything to undermine the University administrators that hired him. The alumni just had no clue how bad the talent level Mack recruited had dropped off. If he could not win the Big12 and contend for Final 4 by now, Big Money wanted him gone.
I've heard similar and it all sounds credible, but I think you should substitute "saban" for "high profile coach" because from what I have heard, he is the only one they went after. Given that Strong was by far the hottest candidate of "up and coming" coaches in the year he was hired, I am not sure how many "high profile" coaches there were other than saban. Maybe Meyer and Fisher, and that's about it. The guy at Stanford was probably on the same level as Strong, but was West Coast and Texas likely wanted someone familiar the South.
I never thought saban would go, and if the Texas big money thought he would, they ain't too bright. Or they don't live in bammer and follow the SEC, I guess.
There are two reasons saban won't leave bammer for texas. One, his wife is said to really like Tuscaloosa (believe it or not), and two (IMO) he won't be able to cheat at recruiting as much at Texas. I think their board worries more about appearance than bammers.
You can throw in that Texas is at best a paralell move, and he already has proven himself at bammer.
saban will only retire or try the NFL again from bammer IMO, and the NFL is probably unlikely.
Having said that, maybe he will surprise us all and go to Texas this year. But I doubt it. He stumbled on to the perfect combination of tradition and corruption at bammer. He was nowhere near this good at LSU, and any move to Texas or wherever is almost certainly going to be a worse situation.
