{"id":278431,"date":"2025-11-08T02:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T02:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278431\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T02:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T02:33:07","slug":"nick-saban-applauds-pat-mcafee-over-viral-college-gameday-pick-from-2023-sec-championship-you-could-never-match-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278431\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Saban applauds Pat McAfee over viral College GameDay pick from 2023 SEC Championship: ‘You could never match that’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 38 years old, Pat McAfee<\/a> is quite literally half the age of the 74-year-old Nick Saban<\/a>. But five minutes of watching their chummy relationship unfold onscreen \u2014 either during Saban\u2019s weekly Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, or in their analyst roles apart of College GameDay on Saturday morning \u2014 you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find two better friends on ESPN\u2019s airwaves.<\/p>\n

Now two years into their buddy cop dynamic following Saban\u2019s retirement from coaching in early 2024, the ex-Alabama<\/a> head coach recalled the moment he first realized the unique power McAfee had over the throngs of college football fans that regularly attend ESPN\u2019s live Saturday morning pregame show.<\/p>\n

During a Friday discussion about how coaches use every sliver of motivation made available to them by college football pundits after fellow GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit predicted<\/a> No. 20 Iowa<\/a> would upset No. 9 Oregon<\/a> this Saturday on Thursday\u2019s show, Saban harkened back to McAfee\u2019s infamous rope-a-dope troll<\/a> of Georgia<\/a> fans ahead of the 2023 SEC Championship game vs. Alabama. <\/p>\n

Nick Saban calls Pat McAfee\u2019s 2023 troll of Georgia fans \u2018the greatest of all time\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest motivator for this generation is if somebody dogs them, somebody disrespects them, and you can use that to motivate your team,\u201d Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show. \u201cI loved it. I was hoping you guys (on College GameDay) picked the other team. \u2026 (But) the greatest of all time is what you did in the (2023) Georgia-Alabama game, when you had all those Georgia people all fired up about how you were going to pick them. You could never match that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the 2023 SEC title game, McAfee opened his part of the weekly pick \u2019em portion of the show by singing Georgia\u2019s popular \u201cWho\u2019s That Comin\u2019 Down the Track\u201d chant before ultimately pulling the rug out from under those \u201cdrunk, obnoxious\u201d Georgia fans by picking No. 8 Alabama to upset the top-ranked Bulldogs<\/a> in the game. And, as fate would have it, McAfee was proven right when Saban\u2019s Crimson Tide ultimately won 27-24 despite a fourth-quarter comeback effort by the \u2018Dawgs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you going out and getting a win for me, Coach, cement it, (that was) LEGENDARY for me,\u201d McAfee told Saban on Friday. \u201cI appreciate the hell out of you. \u2026 That\u2019s why college football is great, man. That type of situation is why college football is great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 38 years old, Pat McAfee is quite literally half the age of the 74-year-old Nick Saban. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,127580,147627,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-278431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-nick-saban-69-monongah","13":"tag-pat-mcafee-05-plum","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}