Nick Saban Declined Offer to Join Texas; Here’s Why

Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban declined to join the Longhorns in 2013—here’s why

After a 16-year long campaign with the Longhorns, coach Mack Brown resigned in 2013. Next, Texas prospected many of the country’s most decorated coaches in an effort to turn the page.

In conversation, one name that came up was Alabama head coach Nick Saban, a proven winner and ideal candidate.

In fact, the Longhorns reportedly offered Saban upwards of $100 million to come to Austin.

During the latest episode of the Saturday Down South podcast, ESPN SEC analyst Paul Finebaum revealed why Saban didn’t accept the job.

“I did a book with Gene Wojciechowski, and we had a nugget in the book that said that Texas boosters had tried to hire Nick Saban, which I think most people knew, but we had a source that said they had offered him more than $100 million and Texas fans acted like they didn’t want Nick Saban,” Finebaum said. “The bottom line is they did want Saban and Saban was offered the job, and he considered it. He said to me and to anybody who would confront him with this, that the reason he didn’t go to Texas — he said this privately, he didn’t say this publicly — was he did not want to have to answer to 10 or 15 different boosters who all felt like they owned the franchise. It was a little of a Jerry Jones complex or a T. Boone Pickens complex in college football in the past."

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“That has always haunted Texas. By the way, it also always haunted the University of Alabama until Nick Saban walked in there in 2007 and sat in booster club meeting after booster club meeting and said, ‘Listen. I run this place. You stay the blank out of my way.’”

How successful would Saban have been at Texas? Finebaum believes that Saban’s success at Alabama would have easily translated to the Longhorns.

“I do believe he would’ve been successful [at Texas] because he would’ve had a similar blueprint to the one that he had at Alabama — ‘I am in charge. That’s the only way to make it work. Texas has more resources than Alabama, so it could’ve easily been done.”

The rest is history, with Texas having flipped through multiple coaches including Charlie Strong and Tom Herman. Now, Saban’s former offensive coordinator, Steve Sarkisian, will take over in 2021.

On the other hand, there is no doubt about Saban’s success at Alabama. He has gone on to win three more National Championships since he reportedly rejected Texas’s offer.

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