Nick Saban Clarifies Draft Comments And Talks Old Texas Rumors

It seems we always end up here sometime during the year. Coach Nick Saban will be asked a question and some of the national media will take quotes out of context in an attempt to turn it into a huge story. We have arrived once again.

Saban was in attendance in Pensacola, Fl. on Tuesday night to speak at a booster function and took a few moments to address two things that has came up in the media in recent weeks: his comments made at SEC Media Days about adjusting the date that NFL hopefuls receive their draft grades and the Texas rumors from a few years ago.

The Texas rumors came back up into the news when the New York Times released an excerpt from an upcoming unauthorized biography called “Saban: The Making of a Coach”. It will be released on August 4. In the book, author Monte Burke wrote about those rumors and many took the chance to come out and say that Saban was closer to leaving that most believed. What stands out to me in the book is that most of the comments seem to come from the Texas side of things. We all know how proud Texas is of their money and they won’t stop at anything to brag about it. Do I think they contacted Saban’s agent Jimmy Sexton? Absolutely. Do I blame him? Nope. Saban explains it a lot better than I could.

“I have an agent (Jimmy Sexton), which most coaches have, and when somebody is interested in you, they call your agent, which they did,” Saban said Tuesday night at the field house at the University of West Florida per TideSports.com. “The agent calls you, and you tell the agent ‘I’m interested’ or ‘I’m not interested.’ So (Sexton) called me about 15 times about Texas, and every time he called I said I’m not interested in talking to them, and I never will be. That’s the story. He did his job, I did my job.”

The next thing he addressed was his comments at SEC Media Days about wanting the NFL to push the date that pro hopefuls receive their draft grades until after the season is over so to have no distractions during the season. Of course, some media made that out to say that Saban was making excuses for the loss to Ohio State in the College Football Playoff. Spare me your interpretations. Post the quote as it reads and keep your analyzing of the comment to yourself. If you don’t think that a college athlete that’s being pulled in a lot of different directions can be distracted so that it has an effect on his play, I have some ocean front property in Arizona that I can make you a great deal on.

“So we’re trying to get ready for a game, and all of a sudden, a guy finds out he’s a first round draft pick or a guy that thought he was a first round draft pick finds out he’s not a first round draft pick, and we’re trying to get ready to play a playoff game,” Saban said at SEC Media Days in Hoover on July 15 per the same TideSports report. “I think that it would be better not to submit that information to a player until he was finished competing in college.”

“All of a sudden, it’s an excuse for losing to Ohio State. Where it came from, I don’t know,” Saban said. “But it had nothing to do with it.”

Saban said he would keep voicing his opinions regardless of what people think or how they could misconstrue his comments. I wouldn’t expect anything less. I also won’t expect anything less than some of the media leeches to latch on as soon as the quotes are made.