Alabama announced the hiring of Steve Sarkisian as offensive coordinator yesterday. 

Nick Saban promoted volunteer offensive assistant Steve Sarkisian to offensive coordinator yesterday. The former Washington and USC head coach will be replacing his good friend Lane Kiffin who is leaving Alabama to take the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic.

There will be plenty of criticism regarding this hiring. Sarkisian’s issues with alcohol at USC are well documented but Sark has gotten treatment and has gotten his life back in order. He deserves a second chance.

Sarkisian was successful as the head coach at Washington and was successful rebuilding the USC program before he started dealing with family issues and alcohol. He can coach offense and at the end of the day, that’s all that Nick Saban cares about. 

Saban could care less about what happened in the past or what the critics think of the Sarkisian hiring. He’s never listened to the noise and he never will. Saban does what ever he wants, as he should. He wins! Who could argue with that?

I think Sarkisian will do a tremendous job at Alabama. It’s hard not to imagine him doing well when you consider all of the four and five star recruits he’s going to coach there. Sarkisian is a West Coast offense guy at heart but he will run a similar pro-style offense to the one Kiffin ran.

Naysayers will question Saban for this hiring but they can say whatever they want. Saban doesn’t give a damn. He does what ever he wants. When you win as much as Saban has, you can do what ever you want and you can hire who ever you want. That’s why he hired Sarkisian.