All Sooners

Alabama Coach Nick Saban Says Oklahoma, Texas Will Make SEC 'Even More Challenging'

The Sooners and Longhorns join the Southeastern Conference next year, and the Crimson Tide coach called it "a great addition to the SEC."

John E. Hoover

Denny Simmons / The Tennessean-USA TODAY NETWORK
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Nick Saban, the most accomplished coach of the modern era, is eager to see what the new SEC looks like next year.

That’s when Oklahoma and Texas join college football’s most powerful conference.

“Oh, I think it's a great addition to the SEC,” Saban said Wednesday at SEC Media Days in Nashville. “You have two great programs that have great traditions that have great fan support. I think it just continues to sort of — the map of the SEC, it is stronger than ever. I think the competition is going to be — it's always been difficult. 

“It's going to be even more challenging because you've got two really, really good programs who have consistently, if you look at the past, have been, you know, Top-10 programs for a lot of years, won national championships.

So they are going to add a lot to the competition.”

Saban’s Alabama squad is scheduled to play at Oklahoma in 2024. It’s instantly a matchup of two of the game’s truest blue bloods. Although it’s undecided yet when or if the SEC will go to a nine-game conference schedule or stick with an eight-game model, Saban sounds excited about playing the Sooners and Longhorns.

“I think with the new scheduling that we'll have in the future, it's more good games for fans, more diversity in who you play,” he said. “So there's a lot of positives about it.”

For Saban’s money, adding OU and Texas simply ups the ante every Saturday, and the quality of competition will elevate everyone.

“From a coaching standpoint, it's going to be much more challenging to be able to compete week-in and week-out,” he said. “I think when you look at the SEC, the thing that separates it is not the top, but the depth, how many good teams there are.

“There was one year where I think we played nine teams — when we won the championship — that we played nine teams that were in the Top 15 or something, I can't remember the year. A lot of that was playing good teams in the playoffs, we played a good team in the SEC Championship Game but you also played a whole bunch of good teams throughout the course of the season, and that's one of the biggest challenges, I think, to be able to play with a level of consistency when you have six, seven or eight really difficult games, as opposed to two or three. Because consistency and performance and playing at a high level becomes a premium, which in all sports, that's always the challenge. You know, how are we going to play this day, and how are we going to accept this challenge and do it week-in and week-out.”

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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