Nick Saban applauds Pat McAfee over viral College GameDay pick from 2023 SEC Championship: 'You could never match that'

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

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

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 No. 20 Iowa would upset No. 9 Oregon this Saturday on Thursday’s show, Saban harkened back to McAfee’s infamous rope-a-dope troll of Georgia fans ahead of the 2023 SEC Championship game vs. Alabama.

Nick Saban calls Pat McAfee’s 2023 troll of Georgia fans ‘the greatest of all time’

“The greatest motivator for this generation is if somebody dogs them, somebody disrespects them, and you can use that to motivate your team,” Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show. “I loved it. I was hoping you guys (on College GameDay) picked the other team. … (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.”

Prior to the 2023 SEC title game, McAfee opened his part of the weekly pick ’em portion of the show by singing Georgia’s popular “Who’s That Comin’ Down the Track” chant before ultimately pulling the rug out from under those “drunk, obnoxious” Georgia fans by picking No. 8 Alabama to upset the top-ranked Bulldogs in the game. And, as fate would have it, McAfee was proven right when Saban’s Crimson Tide ultimately won 27-24 despite a fourth-quarter comeback effort by the ‘Dawgs.

“Now you going out and getting a win for me, Coach, cement it, (that was) LEGENDARY for me,” McAfee told Saban on Friday. “I appreciate the hell out of you. … That’s why college football is great, man. That type of situation is why college football is great.”