Steve Sarkisian gave up a prominent

for an ambiguously titled analyst role within Nick Saban's behemoth Alabama football staff.

The offensive analyst role won't pay well -- it certainly will pay far less than he would have made as a broadcaster -- and yet it could advance the former USC head coach's career significantly more than any on-air role. Sarkisian is simply the latest in a trend of coaches with baggage coming to Alabama for a career rehabilitation at the hands of college football's most famous coach.

Lane Kiffin is Nick Saban's most famous reclamation project, but it is his burgeoning farm system that is most impressively rejuvenating coach careers. Within the most grandiose support staff in the country, Saban employs three former head coaches, a former NFL executive, a Yale-educated attorney and the son of Charlie Weis. There are the typical support staffers just starting their career and looking to work their way up the ladder, but the really interesting stories are the ones like Sarkisian and former New Mexico head coach Mike Locksley.

Locksley, a prominent national recruiter, reportedly turned down on-field assistant positions at Power 5 schools to take an offensive analyst role this spring that pays him $45,000 annually. That's a pittance compared to the $898,940 Locksley made last year at Maryland as the school's offensive coordinator and later interim head coach after Randy Edsall was fired. Known for his recruiting prowess in the fertile Washington, D.C. area, Locksley had never had an off-the-field role in his more than 20-year college career before coming to Alabama.

Alabama receivers coach Billy Napier understands why Locksley took a lesser role in Tuscaloosa. In 2009, Napier was Clemson's offensive coordinator and on the fast track to becoming a major name in college football. By 2011, Napier was out of a job after Dabo Swinney fired him.

That's when Napier swallowed his pride and joined Saban's staff as an offensive analyst. At best, it represented a detour of his long-term plan.

His decision paid off.

"That was probably the best year of my coaching career," Napier told AL.com about his year as an analyst. "I coached for 10 years and came to Alabama and the 11th year I learned more in that one year than I did in the prior 10. It's a great environment to learn and grow as a coach."

After a year as an analyst, former Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain brought him to Colorado State as his quarterbacks coach. Following a successful stint there, Napier returned to Tuscaloosa in an on-field assistant role as receivers coach.

That's another appeal to accepting a support staff position at Alabama: Saban has shown a willingness to promote from within. A popular theory is part of the appeal for Sarkisian coming to Alabama could be the opportunity to replace Kiffin at offensive coordinator one day.

Saban's track record, at the least, shows that's not unfathomable.

Former Baylor head coach Kevin Steele, who now serves as Auburn's defensive coordinator, spent a season as director of player personnel before Saban found him an on-field role as inside linebackers coach. Jeremy Pruitt started as a director of player development at Alabama and now makes $1 million annually as the Tide's defensive coordinator.

Most recently, Alabama hired Tosh Lupoi, Rivals.com's 2010 recruiter of the year, as an analyst in 2014 and promoted him less than a year later to outside linebackers coach. Lupoi's decision to join Saban's staff in such a diminished role after serving, coincidentally enough, as Sarkisian's $350,000 defensive line coach at Washington, generated a lot of questions. It didn't help when Saban dismissively described him as an "intern that helps us some in recruiting" in comments to the media.

Brandon Huffman, the director of recruiting at Scout.com, told AL.com at the time Lupoi had to be "the most qualified recruiting intern in the history of recruiting interns."

But for Lupoi, the decision was simple. He had an opportunity to learn under Saban, a defensive wizard, and ameliorate his reputation after being accused of providing improper benefits to a recruit, a charge the NCAA later cleared him of. The improper benefits accusation hanging over him was reportedly the reason he didn't follow Sarkisian to USC and instead landed at Alabama.

"When that opportunity came across my plate, there wasn't a lot of thinking involved," Lupoi told AL.com. "It's probably the best decision I've ever made in my life."

Lupoi is now the third-highest paid member of Saban's staff, making $550,000 annually as co-defensive coordinator and outside linebackers coach. He's established himself as one of the better recruiters on Saban's staff and will likely be a popular name for coordinator positions in the near future.

It might not be as easy for Alabama's newest offensive analyst.

Sarkisian's issues extend beyond the field after he reportedly showed up to team meetings and a booster event intoxicated. Not long after USC dismissed him, Sarkisian filed a lawsuit against the school claiming it fired him rather than treat his alcoholism. But if anything is clear in the college football landscape, it's winning trumps all no matter how radioactive a coach might have been at one point. Look no further than 10th-ranked Louisville and its head coach Bobby Petrino for proof.

A successful stint on Saban's staff could make athletic directors more amenable to the idea of giving Sarkisian another head coaching opportunity or at least a prominent coordinator position. At top-ranked and defending national champion Alabama, Sarkisian certainly will be around plenty of movers and shakers.

Other schools are always scouring Saban's farm system to find coaches. There's the well popularized Sabanization of the SEC with schools hiring his disciples -- McElwain, Will Muschamp and Kirby Smart in the SEC East alone -- in hopes of recreating the magic happening in Tuscaloosa. It extends to the assistant level, as well, with three support staffers -- Dan Lanning (Memphis), Glenn Schumann (Georgia) and Eric Kiesau (Fresno State) -- all earning on-field FBS-level assistant positions last year.

"Everybody wants to know what's going on at Alabama," Napier said. "People want to hire our guys and that's a product of the success."

Kiesau, who now works as Fresno State's offensive coordinator, is in that same mold as Napier and Locksley. He had previously been an offensive coordinator at schools such as Washington and Colorado but found himself out of work when Charlie Weis' staff was cleared out at Kansas. He had a reputation as a no-huddle expert and came to Alabama in 2015 to help Kiffin and Saban with the offense's tempo.

The best thing about it for Kiesau was he didn't have to worry about all the usual duties he had as an offensive coordinator. Kiesau offered input where he could, but most importantly soaked up the environment and learned why Alabama has been so successful under Saban.

"Sometimes I'd jump into Kirby Smart's meeting and listen to him; sometimes I'd jump in the linebacker meetings and listen to them," Kiesau said. "I was able to jump around and really absorb a lot of information required for coaches, a lot of different styles. The opportunity for me to do that at that point of my career was priceless from a learning standpoint.

"You are learning from the best. He's the best in college football."

And that, more than anything else, is why Sarkisian and others flock to Alabama for roles seemingly beneath them. Fresno State head coach Tim DeRuyter even cited it as one reason he chose Kiesau over other candidates.

"To have some insight on that system and how coach Saban does things and to see how we could maybe incorporate some of those principles into our program, I thought that was really a unique opportunity for us to hire someone like Eric with that background," DeRuyter said.

As the Kiesau situation perfectly illustrates, the arrangement is usually a win-win for all involved.

Saban gets to pad his support staff with prominent, experienced coaches on the cheap to give his program yet another competitive advantage over everyone else. With Sarkisian, Alabama gets a former head coach who had success at the Power 5 level and is a strong offensive mind.

The support staffers learn how college football's most dominant dynasty of the 21st Century keeps rolling, whether it be Saban's recruiting strategy that nets the top-rated class annually or how he runs his staff meetings. They raise their viability through proximity alone.

Consider it like a strong spray of cologne for them. No matter how bad things were before arriving at Alabama, the coaches leave with that distinct smell of winning covering up all the previous stink.