Great resemblances in sports history: Nick Saban’s office

After seeing Nick Saban’s office in the glorified Alabama recruiting video, uh, I mean ESPN show “Training Days: Rolling with the Alabama Crimson Tide,” it reminded me of an office I’d seen before. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I picture Chip Kelly’s desk in his office in the Oregon football complex being some sleek, ultra modern thing paid for with Phil Knight’s money. But Saban looks like he’s sitting at the exact same type of desk as Bear Bryant did. And I can almost guarantee that’s by design.

All that old fashioned wood furnishing sort of gave me a Daniel Plainview vibe, you know, when he was telling poor, deaf H.W. that he was a “bastard from a basket.” Jesus, the last ten minutes of that movie rocked…

But Daniel’s office is a little too dark and menacing in comparison to Saban’s, it’s more of a lair than a place to conduct business. What about the dude Stephen Root played in “No Country For Old Men,” you know, the guy who hires everyone to track down the money, but then gets blasted in his own office by Anton Chigurh:

Nope, it’s another miss, way too bright and airy and significantly less cluttered than Saban’s. Damn thing looks like it was furnished from the J.R. Ewing collection. Well then, what about Dean Wormer’s office, could that have been the resemblance I was thinking of?:

Eh, a little closer, but not quite it. But now that I bring it up, I could definitely see Saban telling a player that fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.

Then it suddenly dawned on me what I was thinking of…Nick Saban’s office looks a lot like Scrooge McDuck’s:

Granted, Saban’s desk doesn’t have bags of gold coins on it, but it might as well.

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