Nick Saban shares hilarious story about recruiting Mark Ingram to Alabama

Now that he’s retired, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban has started to share some more stories about his time coaching with the Crimson Tide. On Thursday evening, he shared a hilarious story about recruiting Mark Ingram to Alabama. When Saban was the head coach at Michigan State, he coached Ingram’s father.

And he had a tough time keeping track of him. So, to keep tabs on him, he would call his girlfriend.

When Saban was recruiting the younger Ingram to Alabama and he went to his house, he wasn’t sure if his mother was the same woman he spoke to when he was the head coach at Michigan State. The former Crimson Tide head coach shared the story with Ingram and Urban Meyer on their podcast, The Triple Option.

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Nick Saban shares a HILARIOUS story about recruiting @MarkIngramII and the Ingram family connection 🤣 pic.twitter.com/swvoA9knln

— The Triple Option (@3xOptionShow) August 22, 2024

Nick Saban and his advice for Kalen DeBoer

Ahead of the 2024 college football season, former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban shared his advice for the team’s new head coach, Kalen DeBoer.

Saban explained on The Triple Option that the pressure is mostly going to be internal. At the same time, outside noise is real and something that needs to be managed by DeBoer, particularly as the team deals with social media.

“The biggest thing, Urban [Meyer] coached at Ohio State, it’s no different there,” Nick Saban said. “When you coach at these programs that have high expectations, which is what we all want — there’s nothing wrong with that — but I think the number one thing you’ve got to do is be who you are. Focus on the things that are in front of you and don’t get impacted by external factors.”

That ability to focus internally and shut out outside noise is particularly important in the age of social media.

“Everybody says there’s a lot of pressure. We all put more pressure on ourselves than anybody in the media, fans, or anybody else’s expectations could ever put on us,” Saban said.

“And I think that’s a little more difficult to do in this day and age because of social media. You know, social media is a great thing in terms of creating interest in athletics, but when players start to believe what they read on the internet, that sometimes can affect their psychological disposition of how they approach what they do, whether they get frustrated, whether they’re disappointed, they’re overconfident, whether they’re complacent. I mean, there’s all kinds of impacts you can have from worrying what other people think rather than controlling what you can control.”

Throughout the course of his career, Nick Saban has often talked about rat poison. There’s even different kinds of rat poison that Saban has battled his team taking, including both praise and criticism.

On3’s Dan Morrison also contributed to this article.