NEW CHALLENGE : Lou Saban Moves On to South Fork High in Florida as a Head Coach This Season

A new job is nothing new for restless Lou Saban, but the veteran coach may have found his biggest challenge yet at his latest stop--South Fork High School.

Saban, who turns 67 next month, has been a head coach for three pro football teams and seven colleges. He made his debut at South Fork when the Fighting Bulldogs opened their season Saturday night against Cocoa Beach.

“I always look for more difficult challenges,” Saban said. “I’m not sure I can find them any more difficult than here. . . . You’ve got to understand--this is the bottom.”

South Fork, a rural school in southeast Florida, had a 1-9 record each of the last two seasons. That caught the attention of Saban, who spent those seasons as defensive coordinator at nearby Martin County High.

“I looked at this squad after our game with them last fall and said, ‘Those youngsters appear to need some help,”’ Saban said. “Somebody apparently overheard me.”

While Saban has spent most of his career with more polished players, he has plenty of experience rebuilding programs:

--He coached the University of Miami in 1977-78, when there was talk that the school would drop football. Saban laid the foundation for the Hurricanes’ success in this decade by recruiting players who helped them win the national championship in 1983.

--Saban had two coaching stints with the Buffalo Bills, each time taking over a team that had won one game the previous season. He led the Bills to four playoff berths and two American Football League championships.

--He joined the Denver Broncos in 1967, when the franchise was one of the American Football League’s worst, and in five years revived support for the team that kept it from leaving the city.

Saban also coached the Boston Patriots and at Northwestern, Western Illinois, Maryland, Army, Cincinnati and Central Florida. He worked for the New York Yankees and longtime friend George Steinbrenner as a scout and as the team’s president.

By his own account, Saban has been fired twice--by the Patriots and at Northwestern. Usually he has resigned, sometimes abruptly. Saban quit his last head coaching job, at Central Florida, in the middle of the 1984 season because, he said, the administration had changed its mind about building a Division I program.

Saban said he has no regrets about his resignations, but when pressed he admits to occasional impatience.

“Maybe I could have lived with a couple of situations a little longer,” he said. “You second-guess yourself and say, ‘You idiot, why did you do such and such?’ ”

Saban makes no pretense about spending a long time at South Fork, a school of 1,350 students that is 12 miles from the nearest town.

“I go from day to day,” he said. “If I can get these youngsters started on the right track, it’s worth it.”

Saban, animated in conversation and looking younger than his age, also is a counselor at South Fork. Most of his work is with potential dropouts.

“I don’t think adults understand how much help our young people need,” he said. “We always deal with statistics, but we don’t deal with feelings. . . .

“We’ve got to give our young people more time to talk, and we’ve got to be able to listen.”

On the football field, Saban said, he coaches teen-agers the same way he coached professional players--by emphasizing blocking, tackling and toughness.

“Football is not a game for prima donnas,” he said. “The hard knocks that they receive out there--they’re going to receive some of those hard knocks in life. So we try to build in comparisons and make it relate for them.”

Saban’s arrival sparked an increase in football participation at South Fork--more than 100 players in four grades are out for the sport this season. The coach earned his players’ respect the first time he held a team meeting, Bulldogs senior linebacker Tyrone Graham said.

“He took the film from last year and said he didn’t want to see it,” Graham recalled. “Then he threw it on the ground.”

Quarterback David Malone said South Fork will have the best-coached team in the state this season because of Saban.

“He’s a very smart man,” Malone said. “You can’t argue with him, although I try sometimes.”

If and when the youngsters win, Saban can start looking for another challenge and another chapter in the autobiography he’s writing. The coach ruled out retirement but not another college or NFL job.

“If it came up, I’d love it,” he said. “I always have that hope someday to be able to get a little higher again.”