Nick Saban hilariously recalls infamous trash talk from Vanderbilt player before 2017 game
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Nick Saban was always known throughout his legendary coaching career for being intense on the sidelines and intense in general.
But 1 of Saban’s most underrated qualities was his sense of humor, which he showed here and there throughout his coaching life. Now that Saban is retired from coaching and working as a college football analyst for ESPN, he gets to show off that sense of humor a lot more.
And on Friday during his appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, Saban was literally right at home talking about something funny. McAfee was doing his show from Tuscaloosa, where he and Saban will co-host College GameDay on Saturday morning in the leadup to No. 10 Alabama‘s clash with No. 16 Vanderbilt (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC). So, Saban was right in his comfort zone, in the place where he became a legend, as he joked with McAfee about a Vanderbilt player who talked trash before his Crimson Tide faced the Commodores in 2017.
Now, that particular meeting between the SEC foes was in Nashville, not Tuscaloosa, where Saturday’s matchup of ranked teams will be. But don’t tell that to the Commodores player who couldn’t quite keep his mouth closed as Vandy got ready to face Bama. The culprit 8 years ago was defensive lineman Nifae Lealao. He said, in effect, it doesn’t matter who you are, even if you’re Alabama, that Vanderbilt had something in store for the Tide team that came into that late September game ranked No. 1 and would go to win the national title.
That Bama team only lost 1 game that season, and it wasn’t to Vanderbilt. Lealao had big words going into the game, but when it was all over that day in Nashville, the scoreboard read: Alabama 59, Vanderbilt 0. And on Friday, Saban was brutally honest with what those fighting words from Lealao did for him going into that game.
“I was happy for him at the time because I was losing sleep over how I was going to motivate our team to play Vandy, and he did it for me, so that was a good thing,” Nick Saban joked.
Here is the full clip of Lealao’s big words from 2017 and Saban’s reaction now:
Lealao was 1 of Vanderbilt’s top defensive tackles that year, which was his final season of a 4-year run at Vandy, so he wasn’t some unknown player back then.
And now? Well, Saban believes Lealao should take pride in the football program that Vanderbilt has become under Clark Lea.
“If I was him, I’d be proud of the fact that the Vanderbilt program has elevated itself to be 5-0, ranked and has a chance to do something spectacular this year,” Saban said.
Saban also said that he wishes Lealao would come out and say it again to motivate Alabama for Saturday, to the laughter of McAfee.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
