It often felt to some observers that there were two groups at SEC coaches meetings — the Nick Saban guys and the others.

“Everybody’s kissing Saban’s ass like a big fraternity,” said one former SEC coach. “In the breaks (between meetings), all the Saban people are laughing and joking like they were brothers.”

Many believed that Jimbo Fisher and Saban had that sort of dynamic, the master and apprentice who worked together to build LSU into a national champion in 2003, before Fisher went on to win a championship as head coach at Florida State 10 years later and become one of the highest-paid coaches in the game. From the outside, there appeared to be a healthy dynamic between two powerful college football elder statesmen.

And then one of the ugliest public coaching rifts in SEC history erupted Thursday, and the reality of that relationship became a little clearer.

“Man, that was crazy watching that,” the SEC coach said. “Obviously that was something personal right there.”

What that referenced — Fisher calling Saban a “narcissist” and saying that somebody should slap the 70-year-old Alabama coach after Saban said Wednesday that Texas A&M “bought every player on their team” — was a fascinating window into the prickly relationship between the most successful coach in college football history and one of his proteges.

“There was (friction) all the time,” said one staffer who worked with both coaches at LSU. “Will (Muschamp) and Kirby (Smart) and all the defensive guys all bowed down to Nick, but Nick depended on Jimbo a lot. But Nick is so hard on his (offensive coordinators). They were always at each other’s throats.”

In talking to more than a dozen people with knowledge of their relationship the past two decades, most described it as one of respect — and competition. The two worked together to build winners at LSU but consistently butted heads over program details and practice structure and how to construct LSU’s offense around its dominant defense. Fisher was a young, rising star coach frustrated with his demanding boss and trying to break out through his own ambition, and Thursday’s events portrayed a man still feeling put down despite his accomplishments.

“They’re so similar personality-wise, both are from similar areas when they grew up with that whole West Virginia mentality,” said one staffer who worked with both coaches at LSU. “It’s that West Virginia grind-it-every-day super-hard-worker thing that lives with them forever. They feel like people are talking down to ‘em. And those guys were so competitive with each other.”

Seventeen years later, Fisher’s Texas A&M beat Saban’s Alabama in the regular season and then beat them again for the No. 1-ranked recruiting class nationally. After all these years, sources close to Fisher say he simply felt hurt by Saban’s remarks about the program he’s attempting to build.