Mississippi State's Jeff Lebby discusses conversation with Nick Saban, why he didn't leave Oklahoma for Alabama

Some of the big-time scuttlebutt to come out of SEC Media Days this week involved former Alabama head coach Nick Saban and current Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby. Apparently, Saban once tried to hire the then-Oklahoma offensive coordinator.

Lebby, speaking at the podium on Wednesday, briefly touched on being pursued by the then-Alabama head coach. He also explained some of his thinking for staying with the Sooners at the time.

“Coach Saban, just an honor to have conversations with him as we went through some things, could not be more thankful for opportunity and at the time it was something where I felt like I needed to be exactly where my feet were and he did pretty good, did pretty good,” Lebby said.

And Saban, for his part, didn’t shy away from explaining why he sought out Lebby and tried to poach him for his own staff while running things for Alabama. In short: Saban thinks quite highly of Lebby as an offensive mind.

“I think Jeff Lebby is one of the best offensive coaches in college football,” Saban said. “We tried to get him to leave Oklahoma to come to Alabama. But I actually watched the spring game and their offensive team looked really good. Blake Shapen, I think that’s how you say his name, is the quarterback and he was very effective. They got some really good transfer receivers in there. They looked like an SEC offensive team. Now, I think they have a lot of work to do on defense, in terms of personnel and players. But I was really, really impressed with them. This is going to be a team that sneaks up on somebody this year.”

The Bulldogs have big plans to run Mississippi

Mississippi State and Ole Miss have one of the most heated rivalries in the SEC. And at SEC Media Days, Bulldogs linebacker John Lewis added some fuel to the fire of that rivalry well before the Egg Bowl matchup in late November to end the regular season.

On Wednesday Lewis was asked about the Rebels’ ‘Come to the Sip’ mantra, providing some choice words regarding the phrase and Ole Miss in general regarding their standing in the state of Mississippi.

“It’s overrated,” Lewis said according to Chris Low. “This is our state. Everybody knows that. We run the Sip because we run Mississippi. We’ve been saying it. They’re just following us, so it’s OK. They literally want to be us.”