A man like Nick Saban probably has more stories than he could even begin to tell. Spending 50 years as a football coach at the college and professional level will do that to a man.
I've been lucky enough to hear several of those stories over the years, but there's probably not one that tops the one circulating again after his retirement.
As a college football coach, Saban recruited all over the country and spent the first 15 or so years of his career in the Northeast part of the United States.
During an insider segment with ESPN's Marty Smith, Saban tells an incredible story about a trip he took to Youngstown, Ohio, the birthplace and childhood town of legendary Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops.
Saban was recruiting in Youngstown years ago, as he put it, and was visiting with Bob Stoops' uncle, Bob Stoops (yes, you read that correctly) in a bar. Suddenly, a man with a shotgun burst into the bar, held up the bartender, and then left the premises. The problem is, that Saban and Stoops were so engrossed in their conversation about football schemes and tactics that they never even realized what had happened.
“We’re drawing plays, talking football, arguing about stuff,” Saban told ESPN in 2015. “Somebody came in with a shotgun and held the bartender up and left. We didn’t know what happened.
“The police came, and the bartender said ‘Don’t ask these two guys what happened, because they didn’t even see it.’”
Now that is a story.
Berry Tramel of the Oklahoman dove deeper into the story with the elder Bob Stoops in 2022 and got the other perspective of what happened that night, and it's safe to say the story has been corroborated.
“We were in this bar,” Uncle Bob told Tramel. “Just talking football. We were moving salt shakers, anything we could grab, talking football.
“I remember vividly, there was a guy across from us, it was a snakelike bar, and the guy gets this glass, he smashes it on the ground.
“I happened to be looking over that way, all of a sudden, I see him smash that, and he was really mad.
“I said, ‘Hey, buddy, is something wrong?’
“He said, ‘Hey, you (expletive), we just got robbed!’
“I’m like, ‘You’re blanking me.’
“He goes, ‘No, they had a shotgun pointed right at you two blank-holes.’”
About 20 minutes later, the police arrived, and the bartender told the cops, “You don’t have to talk to those guys, they don’t even know what’s going on.”
Nick Saban (.804) and Bob Stoops (.798) are two of the winningest coaches in college football history, and now both of them will enjoy retirement from the sport that they impacted so greatly. If Saban and Stoops decide to grab a drink though, maybe choose a different bar.
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