It was around Christmas in 1989 when Pat Perles got the call he suspects might have been the first one Nick Saban made. This was how it all began. Saban had been chosen over then-Notre Dame assistant Pete Cordelli as the new coach at Toledo. It was to be Saban's first head coaching job, but he still had a job to finish as an assistant with the NFL playoff-bound Houston Oilers. "He said, 'I want a recruiting weekend this weekend'," recalled Perles. "It was a Monday or a Tuesday, and Phil (Parker) and I had to round up as many kids to come in that weekend as we could. One of my first questions was whether he wanted to evaluate them before we brought them in. He said, 'I'll evaluate them when I get there, just get as many kids in that weekend as you can.'"
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