University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban is the cool old white man in the black room. He’s fashioned himself this why. He understands that in order to consistently field arguably the best college football team year in and year out, he’s got to be this way. He’s got to be able to speak both the language of the street and the language of a coach, and in doing so, he gets some of the best talent from across the country to get in a time machine and travel back to the segregated South of Alabama. Show me another Southeastern Conference coach who can come into your grandma’s living room and Wobble with all your family. I’ll wait.
But Saban may have taken his hood pass into LeBron James’ barbershop, and, well, Saban’s gonna learn today.
Turns out that Saban may have poached the idea for the University of Alabama series Shop Talk—a barbershop-based open conversation that features Alabama football players getting haircuts and kicking it with their Crimson Tide coach—from The Shop, a show created by LeBron James’ media company, Uninterrupted.
“‘Shop Talk’ is clearly using the ideas, concepts and format previously created and exploited by Uninterrupted in connection with its program titled ‘The Shop,’ and Uninterrupted believes ‘Shop Talk’ infringes the copyright in ‘The Shop,’” Josh Tarnow, the head of business and legal affairs at Uninterrupted, writes in the letter, Business Insider reports.
Tarnow notes that the Alabama rip-off “damages” the “commercial prospects” of The Shop.
“Your continued exploitation of ‘Shop Talk’ infringes ‘Uninterrupted’s’ copyright, trademark rights and other valuable intellectual property rights in ‘The Shop’ and significantly damages ‘Uninterrupted’s’ commercial prospects for ‘The Shop,’” the letter reads.
Tarnow also states in the letter that a “conversation” with the school could probably get everything ironed out before “getting into a ‘battle of legal letters’ or rushing into legal proceedings.”
Watch James’ The Shop:
And then watch the University of Alabama’s Shop Talk and tell me if you see the similarities (of course you do):