First, Texas A&M and Ole Miss beat him using the hurry up, no-huddle offense. Saban came to SEC Media Days and asked, "is this really where we want to go (in college football)?" He was worried about the health of players, especially on defense, because the pace of the hurry up might put their lives in danger.

Then he used it and, lo! It suddenly wasn't so bad.

Then it was the transfer portal that was going to be the death of college football. Until Alabama got Jameson Williams, Jahmyr Gibbs and Eli Ricks. Then it was ok.

And now, Coach AFLAC is mad about NIL. And it could well be because this is a fight he can't win.

"I mean, we were second in recruiting last year," Saban told a crowd in Birmingham, Ala., last night. "A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team -- made a deal for name, image, likeness. We didn't buy one player, all right? But I don't know if we're gonna be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it."

Them's fightin' words. And A&M's coach, a supposed friend, wasn't going to take it.

"Some people think they're God. Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find about the guy you don't want to know. We've built him up to be the Czar of football. Go dig into his past, for anyone who's coached with him. What he does and how he does it. It's despicable," Jimbo Fisher said of Saban Thursday morning.

You have to give Saban credit for his chutzpa. There are a lot of former assistant coaches out there who know what he's done, where and when. You have players in the NFL laughing about comments made in locker rooms around the league that Alabama players have to take pay cuts when they go to the league. There's a lot of "everybody knows" being thrown about on social media today.

But if you ask Nick Saban, he and his program are squeaky clean.

Ok, fine. Then everyone else is too.

Alabama fans are saying there's no way A&M could have recruited legally in 2022, because the Aggies went 8-4 last season. In Saban's first season in Tuscaloosa, the Tide went 7-6 and, in the next recruiting cycle, signed 32 players for the number 1 class in the nation.

Was that legal, or was that just because everyone wanted to come play for Nick Saban? If the latter is the case, why wouldn't a player want to come to A&M and play for a national championship winning coach with elite facilities? The "they cheated" argument doesn't hold up -- unless you're willing to say that Alabama was doing some shady stuff too. Plenty of players in the professional ranks are doing exactly that today.

But this is a new era and uncharted territory. What would make a player go to Alabama and get a free car if he can go to Texas and get a Lamborghini above the table, like Bijan Robinson did? All he has to do is do a little advertising for them and maybe a signing or two.

"Ah," Saban might say. "He's an established player, like Bryce Young is. Buying recruits is cheating."

(By the way, Young got a massive NIL deal before ever taking a serious snap in a game, and Saban boasted about it.)

The point would be that A&M provided inducements to get kids to come to A&M, which would be a violation of NCAA and Texas state law. It's basically play for pay.

Ok, if you're going to make allegations like that, it's pretty serious and you'd better damned well have receipts. So far, Saban has made no indication that he can produce them.

Instead, what you're getting is this:

in other words, this guy is saying Saban has nothing and has defamed the program and the signees. That, in turn, pissed Jimbo Fisher off in a big way.

"Some people think they're God. Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find about the guy you don't want to know. We've built him up to be the Czar of football. Go dig into his past, for anyone who's coached with him. What he does and how he does it. It's despicable," Fisher said of Saban.

In other words: shut up. You have no room to talk and we both know it. And so do a lot of people.

Honestly, Jimbo could have gotten up there this morning and ended the press conference in 15 seconds by saying, "Y'all are poors, you got nothing and it sucks to be y'all." He didn't, because he felt the integrity of his players and the university -- to say nothing of himself -- had been questioned.

You don't get up there and fire off the shots Fisher did, with a voice that's wavering in anger, if you're not very sure you're on solid ground. So now it's up to Saban to substantiate his claims, which he has already had months to do.

Saban, for all his wins and amazing feats, has a nasty little martyr's complex. When something, or someone, beats him, it wasn't because he got licked straight up. It's always something else that caused it. Hurry up, no huddle. Kirby Smart's game-planning against Johnny Manziel. The officials. The transfer portal. It's never, ever the fault of Nick Saban.

And now it's NIL, and that problem is not going away. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on what happened when things were happening under the table, but when everything's out in the open, big money programs have things tilt their way.

Say hello to the Aggie Network, America. It's big, and it's rich. And with West Texas Intermediate crude currently trading at $111.30 per barrel, it's only getting richer.

This may seem unsavory to some people, but that's the fault of the NCAA. It was unprepared and overly arrogant when it came to its position on NIL, then did the business equivalent of going in their room and sulking when the Supreme Court spiked them 9-0. They left things up to conferences and states to figure out, and that caused the mess we have now.

What A&M has done, so far as everyone can see, is completely above board. It hasn't violated NCAA rules and it hasn't violated Texas state laws. Basically, A&M's got a good thing going and Saban can't stand it -- or stop it.

So he's going to whine about it.

Today, he found a guy that isn't going to sit there and take slings and arrows without a response. A&M had already broken the unspoken rule that thou shalt not recruit better than Alabama; now, Fisher has broken the unspoken rule that thou shalt not take a blowtorch to thy fellow coach.

And you know what? He was justified in doing it. Saban's comments were malicious hearsay at best and slanderous at worst, if he doesn't have anything to back up his claims. Fisher definitely thinks he doesn't, because there's nothing there -- but if Saban wants to try to go nuclear, he'll oblige.

Fisher said the friendship he had with Saban is over. "We're done," he said today.

Done?

Saban and Fisher may be done. A&M and Alabama are just getting started with one another. And how loudly will Saban whine if A&M starts winning on a regular basis?