Nick Saban has spent a career shaping football history, but one of the biggest turns in that story almost happened long before Alabama, LSU or the NFL ever became part of the legend.
Speaking with SiriusXM host Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on Thursday, the former Alabama coach said the New York Giants actually offered him their head coaching job when he was at Michigan State. That would have put him in the NFL eight years before his stint with the Miami Dolphins.
“Yeah, they did offer me the job, actually,” Saban said.
The conversation centered on a private interview arranged between Saban and Giants general manager George Young. Saban said the two figured out a way to meet without drawing attention, and the answer was his own house in East Lansing, Mich.
“In some of these cases, it's very difficult in college,” Saban said. “You have an opportunity to go to the NFL.
You're still coaching. You're still recruiting.
If you stay in college, you don't want it to upset your coaching, recruiting and all that. So you don't want to say that I'm going to go interview for the Giants job.”
“So George and I worked out a deal,” Saban said. “He said, 'Well, where do you think we can meet and nobody would know it?'
And I said, 'The least obvious place you would ever think. Just come to my house in East Lansing and nobody will ever know it.'
That's what he did.”
The offer itself wasn’t new. A Jan. 16, 1997, New York Daily News report first made it public, and Giants co-owner John Mara later confirmed it in 2015.
“We were very impressed with him,” Mara said. “We offered him the job.”
Young told Mara and Wellington Mara that Saban was “the best candidate” he had ever interviewed. But the deal never got done. Saban wanted control over personnel and the coaching staff, and the Giants were not willing to hand that much power to a head coach, so the talks broke down.
New York ended up hiring Jim Fassel, who later guided the team to the Super Bowl after the 2000 season.
“I would have loved to have had you,” Russo told Saban. “Fassel did a good job, and he wanted to get the quarterback going and everything else. You would have been really good there.”
Saban remained at Michigan State through 1999 before winning a national title at LSU. He then spent two seasons with the Dolphins, going 15-17, before returning to college and taking over at Alabama in 2007.
The 74-year-old was telling the story while promoting “Saban,” a six-part ESPN docuseries on his career. The first episode airs Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN, and all six episodes will be available on the ESPN app the same day.
The series looks at his 17 seasons and six national titles at Alabama, along with his time at LSU and with the Dolphins. More than 70 people were interviewed for it, including Bill Belichick and Kirby Smart.
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