Nick Saban shares hilarious story from facing Steelers as Browns' defensive coordinator

Alabama head coach Nick Saban is known to be a very serious man most of the time. You simply don’t become the greatest to ever do it in your profession without a laser-like focus. But on occasion, he has let his guard down over the years in certain interviews from time to time. That was the case recently when he had an interview with former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher, on a podcast for The 33rd Team. Saban decided to relax a bit and share a hilarious story about when he was coaching with the Cleveland Browns and they were facing the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Nick Saban’s story when he was the Cleveland Browns’ DC

“So I grow up, everybody’s a Steeler fan. Everybody. And the Steelers and the Browns are rivals. So, when we play the Steelers and I mean when we played them. My whole family. Everybody’s a Steelers fan. I’ve gotta get 100 tickets for guys I grew up with, all my family, everybody wants to go to the game,” Saban said.

“And they’re all rooting for the Steelers. There was no loyalty. And we’re riding out on a bus and people are fighting. Browns fans are fighting with Steelers fans and I’m saying, ‘There’s my buddy right there fighting for the Steelers,” Saban said.

Nick Saban has been coaching football at either the pro or college level since 1973, so it goes without saying that he’s got an endless amount of stories to tell. It’s good to see him relax a bit and enjoy himself away from the grind that is big-time college football. He was the defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns from 1991-1994.

While he’ll go down as the greatest college football coach of all-time and deservedly so, his one stint in the NFL as a head coach came with the Miami Dolphins, and it did not go that well. He finished with a 15-17 overall record with the Dolphins, before wisely deciding to return to the college football coaching ranks, where he joined the Alabama Crimson Tide on Jan. 3, 2007.

He’s been there ever since and the rest, as they say, is college football history. It’ll be interesting to see how much longer he decides to coach for the Crimson Tide in the coming years.