Finebaum then told me something that genuinely surprised me.
Coach had read some of my books. Apparently, more than one copy had been spotted in his office. “Coach has read a couple of your books,” he said. “Google it if you don’t believe me. There is one of your books is sitting right there on his desk.”
My day had just improved 1000%. I grabbed a pen and wrote down the details for the round. When Nick Saban reads your books, you better not show up unprepared—even for golf.
On Presidents’ Day, I made the forty-five-minute drive from my cabin on the Paint Rock River to The Ledges. I was looking forward to the playing the course—but more to the conversation.
Was he content in semi-retirement, making AFLAC commercials and yucking it up with McAfee on ESPN Gameday? It doesn’t take much in this sport—a conversation, a phone call, a text message—for something small to gather momentum and show up months later as something much larger.
I allowed my mind to wander. I’d been thinking about the Alabama basketball team and how effortlessly they’d pulled in NBA players to reshape the roster. They made it seem just sort of normal.
And maybe that was the bigger question.
In 2026, shouldn’t it feel normal for pros to return to college sports? Men are getting pregnant, so why not send underachieving pros back to their colleges?
Of course, my thoughts drifted to football. With all of their QB talent gone, how would the ever-enterprising Bama solve this problem?
What if they convinced United Football League quarterback and former Alabama star A.J. McCarron to take one more snap at Bryant-Denny? In this era, would anyone even blink?
Then there was Greg McElroy. To a very few select people he is an impartial ESPN analyst. To rest of the CFB world, something closer to a turncoat or even at times a Bama apologist. Could you pull him down from the broadcast booth and put him back under center? Could he finish calling the first half from the booth before jogging through the tunnel after suiting up for the second half to rally the Tide?
I laughed aloud at that absurdity. Does absurd really stay absurd for long at the Capstone?
So, did Coach hate the ESPN GameDay atmosphere as widely speculated on by social media? Maybe hate is too strong a word. Maybe “restless” fits better. The internet had been buzzing for weeks, speculating about cultural mismatches and subtle tension—particularly alongside the more cartoonish, and tank-top energy of podcasting Pat McAfee. It wasn’t so much conflict as it was Boomer expectations vs millennial—or whatever-generation-comes-after—attitudes.
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