Josh Pate says Nick Saban’s retirement impacted SEC’s ‘death grip’ on college football
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College football analyst Josh Pate took to a recent episode of “Bussin’ With The Boys” to discuss various topics regarding the CFB world, and the shockwaves of Nick Saban‘s 2024 retirement became a primary talking point.
Joining hosts Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, Pate detailed how much of the SEC’s perceived success was due to Alabama‘s dominance in his eyes.
“Saban retiring, in any era, was going to fundamentally impact the death grip the SEC had on college football,” Pate explained. “Because it wasn’t the SEC that had a death grip, it was Alabama, led by Nick Saban. Ten of the last 11 SEC Championships were either won by Bama or Georgia.”
Saban announced his retirement on Jan. 10, 2024, prompting the Crimson Tide to hire former Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer in his stead. Now working as a primacy anchor on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” Saban is speculated to have moved on from the sport due to various modern-day changes.
“You could come back to me and say ‘What if I told you he retired because of the way NIL was impacting the sport?’ You could have some validity there, I don’t doubt that,” Pate said. “If the NIL thing never changed and Saban retired, that would have fundamentally changed the SEC. It would have fundamentally changed college football. Nick Saban retiring was a bombshell, it was like an asteroid into the ocean.”
Saban finished with a 201-29 overall record through 17 seasons at Alabama. Within those years, of course, came 6 National Championships, 9 SEC Championships and dozens of NFL Draft picks.
[H/T AL.com]
Parker is currently the sports editor for the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, Mississippi. He's a graduate from Mizzou who has experience covering the Tiger football and basketball beats for SB Nation, and he's worked for a variety of sports news outlets in the past.
