During the last few years of Mack Brown’s tenure as Texas head coach in 2012 and 2013, there was plenty of smoke surrounding the possibility that Nick Saban would eventually replace him. However, when Brown resigned in 2013, Charlie Strong ended up as his replacement.
Saban himself downplayed the Texas rumors once again this week, ahead of his team’s trip to Austin.
On the Hey Coach Nick Saban radio show, Saban acknowledged he was never going to consider taking the Texas job, always opting to remain at Alabama.
“You know there was really nothing to be concerned about,” Saban said, via Michael Casagrande of AL.com. “You can blame your colleagues on that because they created that. I never talked to these people and you damage relationships when you do that. Mack Brown was a good friend of mine and somebody that I have a tremendous amount of respect for and he’s the coach there and all anybody can talk about is me going to take his place. I don’t think that’s fair to me, especially when I never even talked to them and I wasn’t interested in the place.”
In 2013, Saban was coming off back-to-back national championships, but failed to win the SEC thanks to Auburn’s dramatic “Kick Six” victory in the Iron Bowl.
Since then, Saban and Alabama have won three more national championships, while Texas has sputtered and is now on their third coach during that span. The Longhorns even went to the Saban well, as former Alabama assistant Steve Sarkisian currently leads the program.
On Saturday, these two teams will face off for the first time since Alabama beat Texas to win the National Championship in 2010.
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For more Alabama coverage, go to Bama Central.
