Nick Saban trolls Penn State over effectiveness of White Out games
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Nick Saban would never deny that crowd noise could impact games. He’d ready his team for raucous crowds and emphasize the need for focus, particularly on the offensive line, where a false start or a missed call could put the offense behind the sticks.
“But I really, really tried to emphasize to the players that those circumstances, those external factors,” Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show, “really [don’t] have any impact on the game. It’s going to be about what you do on the [field] that’s going to make a difference in the game. You gotta make these people sit on their hands. And you do that by good execution.”
And that’s exactly what Alabama did to Penn State when Nick Saban took his Crimson Tide to State College in 2011.
Ahead of Penn State’s White Out game this weekend against Oregon, Saban made sure to remind Nittany Lion fans of that 2011 affair.
“We played in a White Out here and it didn’t help them much,” Saban said on McAfee’s show before cracking a smile.
Alabama was ranked No. 3 in the nation. But they were just 1 game into the season. Penn State was No. 23, looking for a statement in what would be Joe Paterno’s final season in charge.
The year prior in Tuscaloosa, the top-ranked Tide hammered the Nittany Lions 24-3.
Penn State had a little more offensive success in State College, but the end result was the same. Alabama won 27-11. The Tide took a commanding 17-3 lead into the locker room at halftime and led 27-3 with 6 minutes to play in the fourth quarter.
Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron threw for 163 yards and a touchdown. Trent Richardson ran for 111 yards and 2 scores. Eddie Lacy ran for 85 yards. (Those early-Saban-era backfields…) Mark Barron picked off Penn State quarterback Rob Bolden, who threw for just 144 yards and completed only 11 of his 29 passes against the Tide defense.
Saban led the Tide to a national championship that season. They lost a 1-versus-2 regular-season game to LSU at home on Nov. 5, 2011, and then avenged the result with a 21-0 blanking in a New Orleans-based BCS National Championship Game.
Saban went 62-11 in road games as the Alabama head coach. Don’t take it too personally, Penn State fans. Nothing helped when the Saban-led Crimson Tide came to town.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
