Sometimes, karma comes back around in poetic fashion. For the Alabama Crimson Tide football program's pursuit of Arch Manning, that happened. And it was beautiful.
As the New York Post's Matt Ehalt explained, former Tide defensive coordinator Pete Golding evoked Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian's alcoholism to convince Manning that Sark wouldn't last in Austin.
It didn't work, and gloriously backfired on Golding and the Crimson Tide's coaching staff.
"Teams look for any edge when it comes to recruiting — especially for a No. 1 recruit like Manning — and if they see a potential opening, the moral playbook can go out the window," Ehalt wrote.
"In this case, the playbook seemingly meant to create doubt in Manning’s heads that Sarkisian would remain in his position to coach him."
Alabama tried to appeal to something sinister within Manning that clearly didn't exist. There's no way to prove Manning chose the Longhorns in June 2022 to spite the Crimson Tide for having such an ugly culture, but there's also no way to disprove it.
The most depraved part of the whole story is the idea that Nick Saban had anything to do with it. Golding alluded to feeling the pressure from coach Saban, or rather, "daddy," in an excerpt from the upcoming book American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, by Seth Wickersham.
Perhaps more stories like this will pop up and take some shine away from Saban's run in Tuscaloosa. Maybe there's a reason he retired so suddenly in January 2024.
Hopefully not, but this Golding shot at Sarkisian certainly came from left field and is calling into question what was going on behind the scenes at UAT from 2007 to 2023.