After Mack Brown left Texas football back in 2013, the program went all out searching for its next big-time head coach. Going after the biggest name in college football, the Longhorns reportedly offered Alabama head coach Nick Saban the job and a $100 million contract — but one thing kept him away.
ESPN SEC analyst Paul Finebaum explained Saban’s “bottom line” during the latest episode of the Saturday Down South podcast.
“I did a book with Gene Wojciechowski, and we had a nugget in the book that said that Texas boosters had tried to hire Nick Saban, which I think most people knew, but we had a source that said they had offered him more than $100 million and Texas fans acted like they didn’t want Nick Saban,” Finebaum said. “The bottom line is they did want Saban and Saban was offered the job, and he considered it. He said to me and to anybody who would confront him with this, that the reason he didn’t go to Texas — he said this privately, he didn’t say this publicly — was he did not want to have to answer to 10 or 15 different boosters who all felt like they owned the franchise. It was a little of a Jerry Jones complex or a T. Boone Pickens complex in college football in the past.
“That has always haunted Texas. By the way, it also always haunted the University of Alabama until Nick Saban walked in there in 2007 and sat in booster club meeting after booster club meeting and said, ‘Listen. I run this place. You stay the blank out of my way.’”
Turning down this offer ultimately worked well for the all-time great coach. Since being offered the Texas job, Saban has won three more national championships with the Crimson Tide. He’s set to earn $8.7 million through this coming season and that salary will increase by units of $400,000 every year through 2028.
After two short stints for Longhorn coaches Charlie Strong and Tom Herman, Saban’s former offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian will take over the helm in 2021.
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