Fascinating fact emerges on Nick Saban's revamped coaching staff

It’s that time of year again, and that means the Alabama Crimson Tide football staff is going through its annual retooling of its coaching staff. This offseason, the Crimson Tide has added four new coaches to their staff in Travaris Robinson, Eric Wolford, Coleman Hutzler, and Joe Cox. But according to On3’s Matt Zenitz, this is not the first time these coaches were assembled together.

The quartet of Robinson, Wolford, Hutzler, and Cox recently all worked together as members of the South Carolina Gamecocks coaching staff under their former head coach Will Muschamp.

Robinson was hired midway through Jan. as the Crimson Tide’s next cornerback coach. He replaces Jay Valai, who left to become the co-defensive coordinator and pass defense coach for the Oklahoma Sooners. Hutzler will take on two roles with Alabama in two different phases of the game. He was originally hired as the special teams coordinator, but he will also run the outside linebackers unit. Rounding out the group is Wolford and Cox. Wolford is Alabamas’ new offensive line coach, and Cox will be the Tide’s tight end coach in 2022.

Saban provides update on Alabama coaching moves

College football coaches across the country are figuring out different ways to handle the transfer portal and the same goes for Alabama head coach Nick Saban. Today he announced that Crimson Tide linebacker coach Sal Sunseri will be moving into a special assistant role to the head coach to help deal “with the changing landscape of college football.”

Saban talked about the move in-depth in a press conference on Wednesday.

“Sal (Sunseri) is going to be a special assistant to the head coach for me. I think there’s a lot of things going on in college football, the landscape has changed dramatically, you guys all know that. Whether it’s the portal, having people on top of the portal, you almost need a staff of people – just like you have a staff of people for recruiting to find out who the best players in high school are – you also have people responsible to do evaluations in terms of who’s in the portal.”

“And also tracking how guys getting into the portal actually do. I think it’s a little bit of a fad right now to think if I get in the portal and all my issues and problems are going to be solved. But yet it’ll be interesting to see how many people really benefit in a positive way from taking advantage of the opportunity to get into the portal. And we’re going to track those kinds of things. So Sal’s going to be involved in a lot of those things. He’s going to be a special assistant to me to help me in a lot of ways in the changing landscape of college football,” Saban said.

Sunseri has served as Alabama’s outside linebackers coach from 2019 until the end of the 2021-2022 season. He also had a previous stint with the Crimson Tide as their linebackers coach from 2009-2011.