Report: ESPN has 'long eyed' Nick Saban for College GameDay

With Nick Saban set to announce his retirement, the question immediately becomes what’s next for the Alabama coach. News broke Wednesday of his decision to step away from college football after 17 years in Tuscaloosa.

Throughout the years, Saban has made guest appearances on College GameDay, and the sense is there could be a future in the media for him once his career ends. In fact, according to Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy, ESPN has “long eyed” Saban for a role on the show as a “perfect” successor to Lee Corso.

ESPN will let Corso, 88, stay with the show as long as he wants, and the plan is for him to return in 2024. If Saban decided to join the program, though, it sounds like he’d have a spot if he so chooses. As McCarthy noted, Saban has a strong connection with GameDay personality Pat McAfee, joining his show every Thursday throughout the 2023 season.

College GameDay has had Saban on as a guest multiple times since he took over at Alabama, and he has been a staple of the show’s national championship coverage in recent seasons. This year, he wasn’t on the set, though. Rece Davis told Paul Finebaum ESPN offered Saban to come on, as is tradition, but he turned it down.

However, Davis didn’t see anything out of the ordinary because Saban doesn’t always join for national title game coverage.

“The invitation was extended, and he decided not to take it this time,” Davis said. “The invitation’s always open, and always has been to him because he’s phenomenal in that role on television. He wanted to decompress a little bit. And I don’t remember which year, Paul, I think there was one other year in which he decided not to do it. So I didn’t take really take that as some type of warning signal or anything of that nature — and perhaps I missed that. But I thought it was just, you know, it was a pretty short period of time between the Rose Bowl and the national championship game this year.

“Certainly, the offer was extended, the invitation was extended and we would have loved to have had him. But he chose to — obviously, now, we know that he was probably contemplating some very serious things about what he wanted to do in terms of continuing on or not.”

The idea of Nick Saban leaving for ESPN came up about 11 years ago, according to a book by John Talty. He seriously considered stepping away from Alabama after the “Kick Six” against Auburn, Talty Reported, and met with then-sports talent agent Nick Khan. Ultimately, though, Saban returned to Alabama — and he won three national championships after that year.