Rece Davis reveals what working with Nick Saban was like during NFL Draft

While it wasn’t his debut on the set of College GameDay or on the ESPN airwaves, the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit was the debut for Nick Saban, retired football coach and analyst, on the air. And as far as his on-air colleagues are concerned, Saban aced his first assignment.

Reflecting back on the draft and Saban’s performance on air on a recent episode of the College GameDay podcast, host Rece Davis and reporter Pete Thamel reminisced about how the former Alabama head coach got on. And Davis was impressed by Saban’s thoughtfulness and intent with how he’d go about discussing players as they were selected.

“I’ll give you an example without calling a name, and you probably heard this a couple times in our meeting: He referenced things that were perhaps shortcomings of players who were highly rated in the draft order,” Davis said. “And he said, ‘But I’m not sure about saying this on TV.’ So afterwards he and I talked a little bit. And I’m not trying to take any credit for this, but I encouraged him to look for ways to say it, because those are the things we need to hear from the greatest college coach of all and that I felt as if he could do it in a way that wouldn’t sort of rain on the player’s draft day, which is something he was cognizant of, which I think showed great feel.

“And feel is really important. Feel for the guys you’re on the set with, feel for how things are going to go home and I was really impressed that he found the ways to make the criticisms, which showed his honesty, but did it in such a way that not necessarily just emphasized the player’s strong suits but saying, ‘This is the area that he needs to work on. He’s got great talent, he’s got a chance to be a great player. If he’s going to be what he can be, he needs to work on X, Y and Z. He’s a little stiff in the ankles, he needs to do this, he doesn’t come out of his breaks the way we’d like right now, but he can. He’s gotta work on that.’ And he did it in such a way that didn’t make him seem like, ‘Here’s the coach up here and I’m going to break down everybody.'”

As the draft wore on, Saban started to become more enmeshed with his colleagues.

Davis and Thamel elucidated listeners with the backstory of the viral moment where Saban and the rest of the GameDay crew chowed down on Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies on Friday night during the third round.

“I thought between that and a commercial break when they brought snacks around because it was late on Friday night and we were all getting punchy because we were tired,” Davis said. “And he just looked at me and goes, ‘Where are the oatmeal creme pies?’ It also showed the power of Saban that those were produced very quickly.”

Thamel added his perspective of the moment.

“I may have heard that in my ears in the truck and got them going, got some of the folks to bring them up there,” Thamel said. “Because I was on the ears at that point. My voice might not have worked but I had some common sense to know what to do.”

But even with the delivery of the oatmeal creme pie for Saban, they weren’t originally planning to eat them live on air until producer Jim Gaiero got in Davis’ ear and asked about it.

“When the oatmeal creme pies, the Little Debbies came up, our producer Jim Gaiero really — you want to develop the relationship with the new guy on the set,” Davis said. “And Jim gets in my ear and says, ‘Do you think he’ll get mad if we show him eating an oatmeal creme pie on television?’ And I said, ‘Nah, just do it.’ I said, ‘I’ll eat one, too.’ Before long I think we were all chowing down.