Nearly everyone in Alabama was a Nick Saban fan last Wednesday after he announced his plans to retire as the Crimson Tide’s head coach.
Even those who previously hated on Saban, like Alabama Political Reporter's Josh Moon, got on the bandwagon that day.
“Nick Saban for US Senate,” Moon posted on X after the news broke. “Save us from Tommy Tuberville one more time.”
Whether said half-jokingly or not, Moon doubled down on the idea in a subsequent post, not missing a chance to bash Alabama's senior-ranking senator.
"Hear me out, Coach. You don't have to actually do the job. I mean, you'd certainly be better, but at this point having no one in that seat would be better. Please. Help us."
“One serious thing about Nick Saban: he is proof that Alabama people can do great things & that Alabama institutions can be great, but he's also evidence that so many Alabamians choose, for awful reasons, not to do the necessary things to be great in almost every other undertaking,” Moon continued posting.
However, in the early 2000s, when Moon was a sports writer for The Montgomery Advertiser, he had much harsher words for Saban in his column, “Saban’s stingy media policies only hurting fans.”
“The hypocrisy of Nick Saban is astonishing,” Moon wrote about Saban’s limited interactions with the media. “...This from a guy who owes most of his success to the very media he’s now giving the shaft. Let’s be real here, Nick Saban’s reputation is mostly hype.”
Saban was already a well-known championship football coach when Moon wrote his critiques, which garnered a response from none other than ESPN commentator Paul Finebaum, who wrote for The Mobile Press-Register at the time.
“After waking up and reading his column on Easter Sunday, many Tide fans were probably ready to fly this guy to the Moon — on a one-way ticket,” Finebaum wrote in his column, "Saban has upper hand with media.” “...I began to wonder if Moon had hit his head against the wall before penning this particular entry. Or was he writing it with an AK-47 rifle being held to his head in the hands of some deranged Auburn fan? How does one equate two SEC championships and a BCS national championship at LSU with hype?”
Still, that didn’t stop Moon from taking another swipe at Saban in 2013, complaining about his salary and “other job rumors.”
“Let’s be real, Saban has played Alabama again,” Moon wrote.
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