Urban Meyer shoots down Nick Saban return to college coaching, leaves door open for NFL job

Could legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban return to the sidelines? That’s an absolute possibility, according to his former quarterback, Greg McElroy, who floated the idea on Monday.

Now, former coach Urban Meyer has a take on the rumored return. But perhaps not how you might think. Meyer joined the The Herd with Colin Cowherd on Thursday afternoon. Cowherd suggested that he felt Saban might still have not just an itch, but a ‘scratch’ for the NFL.

The former Florida and Ohio State coach, who said he’s close with Saban, not only agreed. He agreed emphatically.

“You know, I have not talked to him about this. I would guess, because I know him fairly well and competed against him, that it’s not a little scratch,” Meyer said. “It’s probably a pretty big scratch. That’s the one area that he has not… you know, like you said, he was getting things going at Miami. I actually visited him while he was down there.

“I don’t think he would go back to college. I don’t see that fit. The whole idea that ‘where the heck is Alabama? Why are they not in the top 10 in spending’ I don’t understand that one. And coach (Kalen) DeBoer, I’d be asking some hard questions, say ‘What’s the problem here? We can’t compete, we can’t pay our players.’ So I agree with you.

“I would say very little to no chance he would get involved in college, but I think he would take phone calls from the NFL.”

Nick Saban, of course, previously spent two years in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins in the mid-2000s. He made the jump to the NFL in 2005 after winning a national championship at LSU in 2003.

But Saban never quite found his footing in the league. He went 9-7 in his first season, then finished 6-10 in his second year, coming in last place in the AFC East.

He then left for the open Alabama job at the start of 2007. The rest, as they say, is history.

Nick Saban went 201-29 over the course of the next 17 years at Alabama, including a 117-18 mark in SEC play. He won six national championships there — to go along with the one at LSU — as well as nine SEC titles.

Suffice it to say, Nick Saban getting back into the coaching ranks at either the college or NFL level would be a major, major bit of news. And apparently there’s reason to believe it could happen, at least according to Meyer.