The two-time national champion and arguably the most powerful coach in sports, Nick Saban was back in his home state yesterday and winning over crowds in Charleston and Fairmont. It probably goes without saying he’s a divisive and maybe even polarizing figure. He’s been a bit of a coaching vagabond and there have been times when he couldn’t be taken at his word. In a business where loyalty and honesty matter so much, those are two strikes you don’t want held against you.

Yet the guy is built for coaching and certainly — and admittedly — in college and not in the NFL. He’s driven and disciplined and he demands from others what he demands fom himself. Probably the best compliment you can find is that he gets what he demands from others … and from himself.

And he’s not going away. Not now. He’s restoring a powerhouse and returning it to the greatest of heights. The allure of movie cameos, BCS trophies, NFL players and indisputable success makes things like recruiting and leading and winning come a lot easier.

So there are two sides and it can be argued all day any day whether he’s the bad guy who can’t be trusted or the great coach who can’t be denied. Yet maybe one is linked to the other and in the middle you see he’s not an all together terrible person, but just someone who was shaped by where he came from and consumed by succeeding.

Why would Saban accept a role in the movie “The Blind Side”? Not to fulfill his ego, for he is the same man who turned down an invitation to join President George W. Bush because he had practice at the time. He took on the movie because of the story, a poor kid adopted by a well-off family and forced to get an education, allowing him to go Ole Miss and become a first-round draft choice.

It was a story about people doing good for people, just as he has done with Marbury, just as his foundation – Nick’s Kids Fund — does to help underprivileged children.

It is about having good people and being good people and doing things right.

It’s about Javier Arenas, a defensive back who broke all kinds of punt return records, but who thrilled Saban the most when he read the headline on the day he graduated college that read: “My Most Significant Accomplishment at Alabama Is Graduating.”

Saban’s talk on this day was spellbinding, talking about assets in players such as discipline and spirit and trust and respect and how they were the glue that brought the talent together and won a national championship. It was why he is in college football and not pro football.

“I’m not made for pro football. I lost my way,” he said of his experiences there, mainly because “my purpose is not to be just a football coach. It means something to me to do it right.”