An old clip of Alabama football coach Nick Saban has blown up on Twitter.
In the video, which has been all over my feed in the past day and has nearly four million views, the six-time national championship winning coach discusses the need for second chances. There might not be a ton I agree with Saban on, but this video is awesome. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
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The Crimson Tide coach said the following in the viral clip, which comes from a few years ago, about players getting in trouble:
Where do you want him to be? Guy makes a mistake. Where do you want him to be? You want him to be in the street or do you want him to be here graduating…Muhsin Muhammad who played 15 for the Carolina Panthers played for me at Michigan State. Everybody in the school, every newspaper guy, everybody was killing a guy because he got in trouble and said there’s no way he should be on our team. I didn’t kick him off the team. I suspended him. I made him do stuff. He graduated from Michigan State. He played 15 years in the league, he’s the president of a company now and he has seven children and his oldest daughter goes to Princeton. So, who was right?
Nick Saban on Second Chances
“There’s always a lot of criticism out
there when somebody does
something wrong. Everyone wants to
know how you are going to
punish the guy. There’s not a lot
of people out there saying: Why
don’t you give him a another
chance?” pic.twitter.com/O1bFjfISGx
— Jaycob Ammerman (@Jammer2233) August 6, 2019
Well, Saban certainly isn’t wrong. I’ve often argued at the college level it’s best to give kids second chances. Now, that obviously wouldn’t apply to a guy who was murdering people, but I’m willing to have a long leash for young men.
Young men are known to make very dumb decisions. Muhammad got popped at MSU for having a loaded weapon and also had an issue with weed.
Is that a great look for the Spartans and Saban? No, but where would you rather the young man be? On the streets or getting an education?
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You can disagree with a lot, but there’s no question that it’s better for somebody to get educated than just throwing them to the wolves.
There’s no doubt at all that I agree with the point Saban was making, and you can tell how passionate he is about the issue of second chances.
He was fired up!
You better take a picture of this because I won’t say it often, but I agree 100% with Saban here. If a kid has some issues with the law, then it’s better he’s in an area with a support system than then on streets.
Again, that doesn’t apply to murderers or rapists, but short of that, I’m willing to strongly-consider a second chance.