Six months after his retirement as Alabama’s head coach, Nick Saban is riding with ESPN’s SEC media days. This time, as part of SEC network coverage of the four-day event, Saban will be asking questions to coaches. “I’m still a coach at heart,” he said. That’s why he wants to ask questions to the coaches so that they can express their views at SEC. saban is a workaholic and full of energy and leaves the place after everyone else. Meanwhile, his first working day at SEC media days is creating a buzz among fans for all the good reasons.

Laura Rutledge, an ESPN insider, shared Saban’s first day with SEC media days. She started by stating that it was one of her favorite moments from media days. “We were on the air from like 9 am to noon or one; it was a three- to four-hour show, and we got off the air. You know, we’ve done it the whole time.” She explained what SEC media days look like and the amount of pressure and hard work that aligns with their day-to-day work.

Rutledge kind of explained the entire scene about why, in the first place, they asked Saban to take a rest. Such a show requires a lot of work. The staff may not move from their place for hours. “You don’t really get up because you, you kind of can’t, you know, we’re like, just talking the whole time, or we’re waiting for somebody at the podium, then they come to the set. Well, we get off; we’re kind of breaking it all down to the production office.” Rutledge gave a brief tour of their set. They were having a busy day dealing with big, influential people all across the football community. Amidst all that, it was obvious for them to think that Saban might get tired after working long hours.

Nick Saban’s reaction to working for fewer hours

Rutledge explained that when they told Saban that his work was done, his reaction was kind of unexpected. She said, “And Saban’s like, so that’s it for the day. Like, I don’t have anything else. And we’re like, Well, yeah, Coach, I mean, you, you know, you just did three and a half hours. It’s kind of long, and he’s like, Well, I want to do more. I thought I was coming here to work, and we were like, okay, you know, and then truly, it was so funny.” Well, it might seem like a light moment, but it can be seen how much Saban is dedicated to whatever he’s doing. He gives his full attention to his work.

Next up, Rutledge shared that after that incident, they kept it in their minds and started working accordingly with Nick Saban. “After that, we added him to more stuff. We were trying to be respectful of his time, and we didn’t want to overdo it. And this guy’s out here, like, No, I prepped all the teams. I want to talk about all the teams and, you know, he did.”

The staff was simply trying not to overwhelm Saban on his first day, or they just, in fact, didn’t want him to work long shifts, which might be honoring him or something, but Saban, being Saban, refused to be treated like that. After all, he’s done way more hard work than this.