Nick Saban: Agent contacted me ‘about 15 times about Texas’
Nick Saban said he was contacted a lot by agent Jimmy Sexton in regards to the then-open job at Texas following the 2013 season.
Mack Brown parted ways with the school after the 2013 season and Saban was mentioned almost incessantly as a possible replacement for Brown even before the coach had officially resigned. The school ended up hiring Charlie Strong.
Over the weekend, an excerpt from a new biography about Saban came out via the New York Times which detailed the contact that Sexton had with those associated with Texas. When asked about the Longhorns Tuesday night, Saban again said he had no interest in the Texas job and told Sexton that when he contacted him ‘about 15 times.’
“I have an agent (Jimmy Sexton), which most coaches have, and when somebody is interested in you, they call your agent, which they did,” Saban said Tuesday night at the field house at the University of West Florida. “The agent calls you, and you tell the agent ‘I’m interested’ or ‘I’m not interested.’ So (Sexton) called me about 15 times about Texas, and every time he called I said I’m not interested in talking to them, and I never will be. That’s the story. He did his job, I did my job.”
The excerpt of “Saban: The Making of a Coach,” which you can read here, is worth the time. Embattled Texas athletic director Steve Patterson is quoted in the piece as saying he had no conversations with Saban. And he also said that he had no interest in flirting with Sexton and the Alabama coach if the Longhorns were going to be used as a pawn to get a raise from Alabama.
Patterson says he believes he knew what Sexton was up to. “I’ve known Jimmy for 30 years,” he says. “I told him if he wanted to come here and drink bourbon and eat barbecue and talk about Saban, that’d be fine. But I told him not to come here if he just wanted to get Saban an extension and a raise at Alabama, which I thought was his intention all along.
“Of course, Jimmy took great affront to that, which is fine. He was just doing his job. But that was the end of the conversation. I never talked to Saban and we never made an offer.”
The Texas rumors officially died when Saban signed a contract extension with Alabama in December 2013.
For more Alabama news, visit TideSports.com.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
