During an appearance on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which is live in Athens for tonight’s Top 10 matchup between the fourth-ranked Tennessee Volunteers and 10th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs, former Alabama football coach Nick Saban dusted off one of his greatest hits.
During a segment discussing which team GameDay panelists thought was the best in the SEC, Saban tried to give a somewhat cagy answer and attempted to reiterate something that guest analyst Tim Tebow had said moments earlier during the roundtable discussion.
“I want to make a point that Tim made about every team has a hole. Ole Miss probably is the best right now, but the reason they have a hole is because Georgia had recruited really, really well. Alabama recruited really, really well. They get high-profile players that leave after a year if they’re not playing. So, you lose your backup so you don’t have any depth left on your team. You have your frontline players, but you don’t have any depth. And you can’t recruit depth out of the portal because those guys want to come (start), so you’re not going to recruit any backup players. That’s why I think everybody’s got some holes.”
Saban’s fellow “GameDay” analysts Desmond Howard and Pat McAfee commented on Saban’s lack of a definitive answer as to who he thought was the best team in the SEC.
That’s when Saban dropped his iconic “rat poison” line.
“Look, man, I’ve got to use the rat poison every now and then… I love Alabama. That’s my team, that’s my guys, that’s who I’m rooting for. I said Ole Miss is playing really well.”
Saban first used the rat poison phrase during the 2017 season after No. 1 Alabama defeated Texas A&M, 27-19, in a tough night game environment at Kyle Field in College Station.
Saban said after that game:
“I’m trying to get our players to listen to me, instead of listening to you guys. You know, all that stuff you write about how good we are, and all that stuff they hear on ESPN, it’s like poison. You know what I mean? It’s like taking poison — like RAT poison,” an animated Saban said at the time.
We’ll see if Saban’s own brand of rat poison helps Alabama. For now, the Crimson Tide face the Mercer Bears today at Bryant-Denny Stadium at 1 p.m. The game can be seen on SEC Network+.