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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
DALLAS — When Alabama players at SEC media days learned their former head coach Nick Saban picked Georgia and Texas to play for the conference title this year, they approached it the only way they knew how — the way Saban taught them.
“Something he taught me was not to pay attention to external factors, and since he works at the stadium now and not the facility, he’s an external factor,” offensive lineman Tyler Booker told ESPN, “so I’m not gonna pay him no mind. He said, ‘Don’t listen to a guy who sits in his mother’s basement and tweets all day, so I’m not going to listen to a guy who plays golf all day.”
Booker, the Crimson Tide’s starting left guard, was laughing as he said it, and hadn’t run into Saban at the sprawling Omni Hotel, where Saban is working as a TV analyst for ESPN. On Monday morning, in a segment with Greg McElroy and Benjamin Watson on SEC Network, Saban pointed to Texas’ depth in its quarterback room and Georgia’s talent as some of his reasons for picking them in the SEC title game.
“I believe in our Alabama team, too — I believe in Jalen Milroe,” Saban said on-air. “I just think the question marks in the secondary, until those get resolved, it’s hard to sort of jump on that bandwagon.”
Alabama defensive back Malachi Moore conceded it’s appropriate to question the secondary because of a lack of experience there, but he had to laugh at Saban’s prediction.
“It’s so quick to see coach Saban take on another role other than being coach Saban,” he said, “but he has a job to do, and he’s entitled to his own opinion. But yeah, we heard him.”
So did Saban’s quarterback, Jalen Milroe, who didn’t flinch.
“All we want to do is focus on us and worry about us,” Milroe said. “We still love Coach, it’s all good.”
Booker said he wasn’t going to confront his former coach about his SEC prediction.
“I’m gonna let him go,” he said laughing.