Rick “Doc” Walker is a long-time sports-talk host in Washington, D.C., but more notably for the purposes of this piece, he’s a former UCLA football player. Walker played on the Rose Bowl-winning 1976 Bruin team, and was taken in the 4th round of the NFL draft the following year. He had a nine-year NFL career that included a Super Bowl XVII win with the Washington Redskins.
In 2017 UCLA was conducting yet another search for a head coach, and Walker was asked on Team 980 whom he thought they should hire. He was very blunt: Nick Saban. Some will scoff, but Walker’s thinking was so very correct. As he saw it, and likely still sees it, UCLA is one of the great jobs in all of college football. Certainly when he played there it was a top-five job, and arguably remained one into the 2000s. The shine is off of late, but UCLA is UCLA. Its home stadium is the Rose Bowl. Its campus abuts Bel-Air, CA. Walker’s implicit point was that when you’re UCLA or some other name school like it, coaching searches should begin with the best in the profession. Knock on Saban’s door to check his availability, and if he says no you then contact the next best on the list.
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