Nick Saban sees why Mike Gundy no longer had the same passion for college football he once did in the NIL era before he was fired by the Oklahoma State Cowboys football program this past Tuesday.
The Alabama Crimson Tide coaching legend retired in January 2024 for the same reasons. Ipso facto, Saban shared empathy for Gundy’s situation in addressing Oklahoma State’s major personnel decision on Saturday’s College GameDay from State College, Pennsylvania.
“Some people have a tougher time embracing the whole idea of paying players, especially some of us old timers. It's a little more difficult. Mike Gundy has been a great coach for a long time. Coaching is teaching, and teaching is ability to inspire learning. For those of us who kind of get that and that's been our self-gratification for so many years, embracing paying the players has been a little bit harder, and I think that ultimately is what got them at Oklahoma State,” Saban said.
Saban and Gundy are cut from the same cloth and embraced the old-school way of doing things.
Their exits from their respective coaching positions couldn’t have gone any differently, though.
As Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger noted, Saban going out on his own terms is special. Dellenger was responding to a tweet from On3’s Chris Low, who noted that Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno, Bill Snyder, Mack Brown, Barry Switzer, Phillip Fulmer, Johnny Majors, Gary Patterson, John Cooper, Les Miles, Jimbo Fisher, and Mark Richt all were forced out.
Gundy was just another casualty in a long line of great coaches whose end of the line was coming, and who didn’t go out on their own terms.
Saban was different. But he wasn’t different in how he viewed the sport’s changes.