Nick Saban responds to Paul Finebaum jab with a counterpunch of his own

Nick Saban may be approaching SEC Media Days differently this season, as the former Alabama head coach is with the ESPN contingent, instead of readying to wax poetic about his Crimson Tide.

Well, he still may heap praise on Alabama, but he’ll have many different programs to examine as part of SEC Network’s coverage of the event over the next couple of days. Before all of that, he had to deal with a member of the media he’s grown to know very well over his time in the SEC in Paul Finebaum.

During an appearance on Get Up with Mike Greenberg on ESPN, Finebaum spoke about how much he misses Saban being the face of coaching in the SEC, and why he’s been suffering ever since his retirement.

“This is self-serving here, since January 10, this has been the worst six months of my life, without Nick Saban. I wanted to get that off my chest, before we begin the college football season,” Finebaum said.

After Greenberg quipped that Saban has “ruined the life” of his ESPN colleague, the former Alabama head coach had the perfect response to the situation, “Well, he tried to ruin mine for 17 years, so I guess we’re even,” he quipped, regarding Finebaum.

As you can tell, Nick Saban’s still got his fastball, and he’ll fit right into the media side at SEC Media Days. Paul Finebaum might want to tread carefully, as the former Crimson Tide leader joins him and the ESPN contingent this week.

More on Nick Saban, SEC Media Days

Alas, the SEC is officially up after the Big 12 got the media coverage started in Las Vegas last week. As teams head to Dallas over the next three days, the SEC Network has revealed their full coverage plans.

The headliner, of course, is former Alabama head coach Nick Saban, as he goes through his first season with ESPN’s family of networks.

Saban joined ESPN in February after announcing his retirement from a 50-year coaching career and will be on the College GameDay desk this season. When the network announced his addition, the plan was for him to be at SEC Media Days, and he headlines the impressive list of analysts who will be at the event.

Greg McElroy, Jordan Rodgers, Roman Harper, Chris Doering, Benjamin Watson, Sam Acho, Cole Cubelic and Dusty Dvoracek are also on board, in addition to Saban. They will all be contributing to the network’s coverage, which begins Monday when Greg Sankey kicks off the week of press conferences.

All told, SEC Network is planning nearly 50 hours of content with its staple programs – SEC This Morning, SEC Now and The Paul Finebaum Show – will take over the network for media days. But there will also be some expanded content on ESPN2 as the SEC starts is new media rights deal with ESPN and ABC.

On Wednesday, SEC Now: Live from SEC Football Media Days will air on both ESPN2 and SEC Network. That program will start at 8 p.m. ET, according to the announcement.

There will also be two Homecoming documentaries – narrated by Finebaum – celebrating Texas and Oklahoma, who are officially members of the SEC after leaving the Big 12.

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.