Paul Finebaum shares his favorite story from Nick Saban's career

Everyone has begun to recall their most memorable moments with Nick Saban as he begins his well-deserved retirement. That includes Paul Finebaum, who was able to get to know the former Alabama head coach well over his tenure in Tuscaloosa.

Finebaum, who joined SportsCenter earlier this week to discuss Saban’s retirement, remembered his favorite moment with Saban.

“It occurred a week after his first national championship. I went out with some friends of his to Houston for the Paul Bryant Award. Now remember, this is exactly one week after he beat Texas in the Rose Bowl and we’re at this cocktail party. He saw me and gravitated toward me — not that he liked me — he just didn’t want to talk to anybody else. It was easier for him to talk to one person than 150 and take pictures.

“So I congratulated him. I said, ‘Congratulations, Coach, this must be remarkable.’ And he looked at me as if I had said something unkind about his family. He said, ‘What’s so remarkable about it? I just lost a week in recruiting that I’ll never get back.'”

After winning the 2009 BCS Championship, Saban went on to sign a top-three recruiting class that has more than one memorable name on it, including AJ McCarron, Eddie Lacy, Dre Kirkpatrick and Trent Richardson, among others.

Of course, if you ask Saban, there’s probably a name or two that went somewhere else because he had to go play in a national championship game instead of being on the recruiting trail. Over the next three years, however, Alabama would go on to win two of the next three national championships with that recruiting class leading the way. The Crimson Tide would lose five total games in those three years.

That recruiting class — which came directly after Saban’s first national title win as Alabama head coach — set the precedent for what would go on to be Saban’s chokehold over the final years of the BCS era. Not only in the national title scene but in the recruiting game as well.

Over a decade later, and Alabama never slowed down under Saban’s guide. Even in 2024, Alabama was one play away from potentially making a College Football Playoff National Championship game berth and is set to sign the No. 2 class in the 2024 rankings.

That success was never going to slow down under Saban, however, so calling it quits at the top of his game is admirable for someone considered the greatest college football coach of all time. Instead of holding onto the game — he let it go after a phenomenal final act as Alabama boss.