Dubois: Saban still grabs attention

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jul 24, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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At SEC Media Days, print and Internet reporters sit in a hotel ballroom that seats up to 400, row after row, table after table. A football coach comes in, speaks and answers questions for about 40 minutes, then leaves to meet with other media.

During the lulls, the inevitable chatter grows to a low roar. When the next coach enters, the room becomes quiet again.

There were still whispers and chuckles in the room Wednesday when LSU coach Les Miles stepped to the lectern and microphone for his turn. Bobby Johnson of Vanderbilt was well into his opening remarks while reporters continued to gossip, guffaw and grouse.

One carried on a cell-phone conversation at low volume. Two exchanged witticisms a few feet away, Vanderbilt’s outlook clearly off their radar.

Two days in, seven of eight SEC coaches have walked into the ballroom amid the audible industrial byproduct of keyboard jockeys jawing at each other. The exception came mid-morning Thursday.

A few steps into the room, Alabama coach Nick Saban walked from the back to the front amid such stillness, you could almost hear whether his left and right shoes met the heavy carpet with equal foot-pounds of pressure.

This was a silence that spoke, a hush that contained volumes of meaning in its absence of anything resembling sound.

If you need a universal frame of reference, recall the principal suddenly striding into the classroom. Instant quiet, perfect posture, an almost atmospheric shift.

He seems more relaxed than a year ago, when he returned to SEC Media Days after two seasons in the NFL. Two moves in two years took their toll.

“It was a difficult time for the Sabans,” he said, adding a Cliffs Notes version of the speech he gave last year. In it, and in pieces of news conferences later, he revealed he’d learned a lot about himself.