Nick Saban Considered Leaving Coaching for ESPN, New Book Claims

After the infamous “Kick Six” game, the Crimson Tide coach had serious interest in making the jump to the sports media world.

It’s hard to imagine Nick Saban in any other place than on the sidelines, but the seven-time national champion reportedly once considered trading in his coaching clipboard for a broadcast headset.

According to an excerpt reported by the New York Post from the new book, The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban by Al.com senior sports editor John Talty, Saban had meetings about potentially leaving Alabama for ESPN in 2014.

The possibility of a move to ESPN began to emerge when Saban met with Nick Khan, then a sports media talent agent at CAA, prior to the ’13 season. At the time, Khan represented high-profile television personalities including Kirk Herbstreit, Skip Bayless, Colin Cowherd, Mike Greenberg and many others, according to Talty.

However, it was after the infamous “Kick Six” loss to Auburn that led Saban to seriously weigh his options, per Talty. After the Crimson Tide were eliminated from national championship contention with a gut-wrenching loss in the Iron Bowl, Saban reportedly “empowered Khan to reach out to ESPN with the message Saban was thinking about the next chapter in his career and considering whether media should be a part of that,” Talty reports.

After the Kick Six loss, Nick Saban was at an inflection point. Reported for the first time in my upcoming book, Saban considered leaving Alabama for a College GameDay role at ESPN. @sportsrapport wrote about it for @nypostsports : https://t.co/wIPZ8nLVWz

— John Talty (@JTalty) July 26, 2022

Khan then reportedly set up a meeting between Saban, his coaching agent Jimmy Sexton and Syracuse’s athletics director John Wildhack, who was a senior executive at ESPN at the time. According to Talty, the Alabama coach was said to have “zeroed in” on the possibility of joining ESPN’s College GameDay, asking Wildhack about life at ESPN, the company’s organizational structure and if it was like “working on a team.” 

Ultimately, Saban decided to return to Tuscaloosa where he’s won three national championships since, but his interest in a sports media role at the time was legitimate.

“Not because we didn’t have a good conversation and not because he wasn’t intrigued by television because he was intrigued and he was interested,” Wildhack said in the book, per the Post. “If he wasn’t interested, he never would have done it in the first place. But I also didn’t think he was ready to step aside as being a coach.”

The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban will be released on Aug. 9.

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