This season one of the greatest coaches of all time is making his living as a commentator instead of working the sidelines. On Saturday’s edition of College Gameday on ESPN, the former Alabama coach spoke on a lot of subjects including HBCU football and former Jackson State coach Deion Sanders.
Saban’s comments came during a segment of the show when the panel was discussing some of the top HBCU games for week one.
“HBCU to me is a conference that gets overlooked a little bit. I think they play some really good football.There’s a lot of big games. No one realizes the impact that Deion Sanders had on the SWAC… They got a huge TV contract, which has now enabled them to upgrade the quality of their programs, as well as provide better opportunities for their players to develop as people, as students and have better careers as football players. South Carolina State versus Florida A&M, those kind of games are great games to watch with a lot of great players,” Saban said on the ESPN broadcast.
The mutual respect between Nick Saban and Deion Sanders
Saban and Deion Sanders have a great relationship that has survived some stress in the last couple of years. Both Saban and Sanders star alongside one another in the AFLAC commercials, which began while Sanders was at Jackson State.
The current Colorado coach has always expressed his high regard for Saban although there was a rocky moment during Sanders’ last season at JSU. Saban, who was still coaching Alabama at the time, remarked during a speech that Jackson State had paid a recruit, with the inference widely assumed to be Travis Hunter, in order to land him out of high school.
“Jackson State paid a guy a million dollars last year that was a really good Division I player to come to school. It was in the paper. They bragged about it. Nobody did anything about it,” Saban said in 2022.
Sanders quickly and vehemently denied the allegations while taking issue with Saban. The incident appeared to blow over quickly after Nick Saban apologized and the two went on with their commercial campaign for Aflac.