We're Here to Help (Unless It Hurts Us)

Considering Georgia is rumored to have some interest in Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart as a potential replacement for Willie Martinez, I figured it might be worthwhile to pass along Nick Saban's thoughts from today's SEC championship game news conference, on his coaches having other options for jobs...

"Well, first of all, you know we want our coaches to advance. And I think that if we have someone on our staff, it should be their motivation to do a good job to be able to create a better opportunity for themselves.

"In other words, if you're a coordinator, you can become a head coach. If you're not a coordinator, you could go someplace and be a coordinator and actually gain more responsibility.

"I don't necessarily think that just a move to move sometimes when it's not really an advancement in terms of responsibility is something that you like to see on your staff, because you hope that the people that are there are working to move up the ladder so they can create an opportunity for themselves that will give them an advancement based on their performance and what they achieve and what they do by doing a good job in the job that they're in.

"Because the issues and the problems are the same everywhere. So we always want our coaches to be able to do that.

"We want to help them do it. But at the same time we want them to stay focused on what's best for our team and our players right now and this situation because those are all things that can be managed after the game.

"There's a time and place for all those things. And I don't think today's the right day."

You can probably take that to mean that Saban isn't going to be real receptive to a call from Mark Richt wanting to talk to his DC about a lateral move at this point.