Nick Saban once said, and it wasn’t that long ago, that he would not be the Alabama coach. Today, he is, and there is much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth about him having no dignity, being a liar, and a terrible terrible human being. I don’t see it that way. I think if a coach is interested in a job other than the one he currently holds, he absolutely should lie about it. It doesn’t make any sense not to.

Says Pat Forde in the article linked above:

…this would be my suggested sample comment for a coach being sought for a job other than the one he now has:

“Although I love the position I currently hold, I am a candidate for job X. I will not discuss it further until there is something tangible, be it an interview or an offer, to discuss. Goodbye.”

Well, that sounds nice. But ask Jim Mora how good of an idea it is to talk about one job while you have another. How’d that work out for him? And he was even joking about it. But Arthur Blank, the owner of his club heard it, felt like Mora embarrassed the organization, disrespected the position he’d been given with the Falcons, and Mora was gone.

And you know what? I don’t blame Blank, either. Coaches get a lot of money to represent teams or institutions … and you expect them to say publicly that there’s another job they like better? And you expect their employers to be OK with that?

Say that a fictional Coach Wang is the coach at Ball State. And he says that he’d be interested in the position at Johnson University. But the negotiations with Johnson don’t work out, and now he’s left at Ball State, where the perception will be that he hates the job, wants out, feels like he’s above it, and he’s just screwed.

If you say, “No, I’m not interested,” and the job doesn’t pan out, then hey, you said all along you weren’t interested. If it works out that you do get the job, well, then, you just have to be branded a liar. But everyone else in the coaching profession is going to understand, and hopefully, you can dry your eyes on your fat new paychecks.

So you lie about it. You fake your loyalty, and you look out for yourself … much like everyone else in corporate America. Teams certainly don’t show much loyalty for coaches when they aren’t winning. Coaches need not show any loyalty to teams when they are.