Last year, former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach turned ESPN analyst Nick Saban infamously dismissed the Vanderbilt Commodores as the only easy game in the SEC. However, those words came back to bite him soon after, and this year, he has changed his tune on the program.
Just weeks before Vanderbilt pulled off an upset against Saban’s former team, Saban declared that Vanderbilt was the only road test that was not all that difficult.
“The only place you play in the SEC that’s not hard to play in is Vanderbilt,” Saban said last year. “When you play at Vanderbilt, you have more fans there than they have. And that’s no disrespect to them, it’s just the truth. When we played in Nashville, we had more fans, Alabama fans, than what they had, Vanderbilt fans.”
Of course, those words pretty quickly came back to bite him when Alabama lost on the road against Vanderbilt just a few weeks later, and the Commodores let him know about it.
A year later, Vanderbilt is a top-10 team with a real chance to make a college football playoff run, and Nick Saban is now a believer.
ESPN’s College GameDay pregame show was on Vanderbilt’s campus ahead of their high-profile SEC showdown with the Missouri Tigers, and Saban made it clear that his mind has been changed on the Commodores.
After Pat McAfee reminded the crowd of Saban’s previous comments, eliciting boos from those in attendance, Saban quickly let them know that he is now on their side.
“Coach Saban is jumping on the Vanderbilt bandwagon,” Saban told the crowd on Saturday morning.
The crowd immediately changed their tune, as well, as they began chanting his name.
Of course, this support won’t change the fact that Saban was undefeated against Vanderbilt during his coaching career, but it sounds like the fans are willing to overlook his dominance against them, at least this once.
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