74 Facts About Lou Saban

Louis Henry Saban was an American football player and coach.

Lou Saban played for Indiana University in college and as a professional for the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference between 1946 and 1949.

Lou Saban joined the Buffalo Bills two years later, and led the team to consecutive AFL championships in 1964 and 1965.

Lou Saban coached teams including the University of Miami, Army, University of Central Florida and Peru State College.

Lou Saban coached at the high school level and for two Arena Football League teams.

Lou Saban switched jobs frequently and developed a reputation as an itinerant.

Lou Saban initially dismissed this characterization, but came to accept it later in life.

Lou Saban held 21 coaching jobs during his 50-year career, which ended with a job at Chowan University in North Carolina between 2001 and 2002.

Lou Saban suffered from heart problems and had a fall in his home that required hospitalization in 2009.

Lou Saban was the son of immigrants from Croatia and grew up near La Grange, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Lou Saban attended Lyons Township High School and joined the school's football team.

Lou Saban's high school coach was an Indiana University alumnus and convinced him to enroll there.

Lou Saban played for the Indiana Hoosiers football team starting in 1940.

Lou Saban was used as a quarterback in 1941, his sophomore year.

Lou Saban was named to the Associated Press All-Big Ten second team as a quarterback in 1942.

Lou Saban was the captain of Indiana's 1942 team and was selected as its most valuable player.

Later in 1943, Lou Saban joined the US Army as World War II intensified following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lou Saban, then stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia, was named the college team's second Most Valuable Player after quarterback Glenn Dobbs of the University of Tulsa.

Lou Saban played for Fort Benning's 1944 Third Infantry Cockades football team, while stationed there.

Lou Saban studied Chinese for five months at the University of California and served in China and India as an Army interpreter.

Lou Saban was selected in the 10th round of the 1944 NFL Draft by Card-Pitt, a temporary merger between the Chicago Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers made necessary after the teams were gutted by players' military service.

Lou Saban did not sign with Card-Pitt, and instead joined the Cleveland Browns, a team under formation in the new All-America Football Conference and coached by Paul Brown.

Brown said Lou Saban would be used exclusively on defense as a linebacker and as a kicker of extra points.

Lou Saban was one of the first arrivals at the Browns' training camp in Bowling Green, Ohio, having left China just three weeks before.

Lou Saban was mainly used as a linebacker and had four interceptions as the Browns won the first AAFC championship.

Lou Saban was named the Browns' captain in 1946 after Jim Daniell, the first team captain, was arrested in a scuffle with Cleveland police and was kicked off the team at the end of the season.

Never having finished his degree at Indiana, Lou Saban enrolled that summer at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio.

Lou Saban beat more than 50 applicants to win the head coaching job at Case in February 1950, thanks to what the university's president called his "unusually sound knowledge of football" and his "leadership qualities".

Lou Saban "possesses the sort of personality and character that is of great value in work with young men", the president said.

Lou Saban was 28 years old at the time, and the appointment made him one of the youngest college head coaches in the country.

Lou Saban borrowed coaching techniques from Brown, alongside his version of the T formation offense.

Lou Saban's team finished the 1950 season with four wins and four losses.

Lou Saban resigned in March 1953 to become an assistant at the University of Washington under head coach John Cherberg.

Lou Saban spent just one year at Washington before getting a job as an assistant coach at Northwestern University, saying he wanted to return to the Midwest.

In February 1955, Lou Saban was promoted to head coach at Northwestern, succeeding Bob Voigts and becoming the youngest coach in the Big Ten Conference at 33 years old.

Lou Saban hired George Steinbrenner as one of his assistant coaches.

Lou Saban moved on to a job as head coach at Western Illinois University in 1957, where he quickly built up a successful team.

In January 1962, Lou Saban was named the coach of the Buffalo Bills, another AFL team, signing a one-year contract worth $20,000.

Lou Saban acquired Jack Kemp, a quarterback, from the San Diego Chargers, who had put him out on waivers while he recovered from a finger injury.

Lou Saban was named coach of the year for the second time in a row, silencing critics who had said he was indecisive, did not use his players properly and was not a good play-caller.

Lou Saban unexpectedly departed in early 1966 for the University of Maryland.

Lou Saban said he was leaving because "there can be little left to conquer in professional football".

Lou Saban returned to professional football as coach of the AFL's Denver Broncos in December 1966, signing a 10-year contract with an annual salary of $50,000.

Lou Saban replaced Ray Malavasi, an assistant who took over after Saban's former Browns teammate, Mac Speedie, resigned from the post after the first two games of the season.

Lou Saban engineered a number of trades before the 1967 season.

Lou Saban brought Gilchrist to the team from Miami in a seven-player deal; Denver had sent Gilchrist to Miami the previous season.

Lou Saban acquired quarterback Steve Tensi from the Chargers in August for first-round draft picks in 1968 and 1969.

Lou Saban said resigning was "my responsibility to the team" and what while the club made progress, "my only regret is that we have not been able to give Denver a championship".

Lou Saban was named head coach of the Bills for a second time in late 1971.

Under Lou Saban, Simpson continued to improve in 1973, setting a single-game rushing record with 250 yards in the season opener against the New England Patriots.

Lou Saban surpassed the single-season rushing record later in the year with more than 2,000 yards.

Lou Saban said after the game that the Steelers' offensive domination was the deciding factor.

Lou Saban was reportedly angry about how Bills owner Ralph Wilson handled the re-signing of Simpson, who had demanded a trade at the beginning of the season.

Lou Saban was replaced by Jim Ringo, who he had hired as an assistant in 1972.

Lou Saban resigned 19 days later and took a job as the head coach at the University of Miami, reportedly for a $375,000 salary.

Lou Saban had double-bypass heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in the summer of 1977, but recovered by the time Miami's season began later that year.

When Lou Saban came to Miami, the football team had won just five games in the previous two seasons.

Lou Saban instituted an extensive recruiting network to rebuild Miami's program, and was named the school's athletic director in early 1978.

Lou Saban was convinced to remain through the end of the season before leaving to coach at Army.

Lou Saban said he wanted to stay at Army "until they put me out to pasture".

Lou Saban said he was unhappy with the academy's unwillingness to invest more in its football program.

Lou Saban next worked for George Steinbrenner, first in 1980 as an executive at Steinbrenner's Tampa Bay Downs racetrack and the following year as president of the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball.

Lou Saban took the post as a favor to Steinbrenner, a close friend who had served on his coaching staff at Northwestern in 1955.

Lou Saban came out of retirement in 1986 to coach high school football in Stuart, Florida, serving as the defensive coordinator for the Martin County High School Fighting Tigers.

Lou Saban said he was there to have fun and enjoy life, and that his reputation as a coaching "nomad" bothered him.

Lou Saban was hired in 1990 to coach the Middle Georgia Heat Wave, a semipro team in Macon, Georgia, but he left after just four games.

Lou Saban resigned in January 1992 because of a new rule that required him to teach at the school, a responsibility he did not want to take on.

Lou Saban next signed on as an assistant with the Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League.

Shortly after his firing, Lou Saban signed on to help start a football program at Alfred State College, a two-year technology school southeast of Buffalo.

In 1995, Lou Saban was named the first head football coach at SUNY Canton, a two-year college where he stayed for six seasons.

Lou Saban died at his home in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on March 29,2009.

Lou Saban was married to his first wife, Lorraine, and had a son, Thomas, and 3 daughters, Patricia, Barbara, and Christine.

Lou Saban shared seven children with his second wife, Joyce but did not have any children together.

Lou Saban had periods of success as a player and as a coach at the college and professional levels, but his constant moves from job to job eventually came to define him.