Recently retired Alabama coach Nick Saban, one of the biggest names in college football history, is joining ESPN and College Gameday as an analyst.
ESPN announced Wednesday that Saban is joining the network as a college football analyst primarily on College Gameday, working alongside the returning Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Desmond Howard and Pat McAfee. Saban will also contribute to ESPN’s coverage of the NFL Draft and SEC media days.
The hiring was not unexpected. To the contrary, Saban was long expected to not just end up in television after his retirement, but to end up specifically on ESPN’s Gameday show. He has served as a guest analyst on Gameday on several occasions and also appeared as a regular guest on The Pat McAfee Show throughout the college season.
Saban, who spent most of his head coaching career in the SEC and won national championships at Alabama and LSU, was also an ideal fit for an ESPN that next season becomes the exclusive home of SEC football. There was no serious thought that he would end up at competitor Fox Sports.
ESPN did not say when Saban will make his debut with the network.
For Gameday, which is in a transition period as longtime analyst Lee Corso winds down his career, the addition of Saban ensures that the show will continue to hold a prominent position in the college football conversation. It can scarcely be debated that he is the highest-profile acquisition in the show’s history, surpassing Howard.
Hiring a prominent coach like Saban is always a risk for a network, and ESPN can look no further than its lead NBA team for a recent example of such a move ending prematurely. Given Saban’s age — 72 — and his exalted position at Alabama, it is fairly unlikely that he will return to the coaching ranks any time soon.
