Nick Saban usually does not need much prompting to tell you what he thinks. Pat McAfee found that out again Friday. McAfee brought Saban onto his show and asked about Ian Rapoport, the veteran NFL insider who has been covering Saban for years.
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“Okay, did you hear rap sheet (Ian Rapoport)? What are your thoughts on him? Rappoport, he said you loved him,” McAfee sarcastically asked Saban.
“Yeah. I loved him,” Saban said on September 25 on the Pat McAfee Show. “He was full of sh– when he covered me, and he is still full of s–.” McAfee immediately screamed in surprise after the expletive. Saban didn’t stop there.’
“He was good,” he added, before explaining why he respected Rapoport despite the jab. Saban said the reporter was “objective” and “always fair” when he covered him, and that was what he appreciated about Rapoport.
That second part is what made the exchange work. Saban was clearly taking a shot at Rapoport, but he was not accusing him of being a bad reporter. He was saying almost the opposite.
Before making a name for himself as an NFL insider, Ian Rapoport spent three years covering Alabama for The Birmingham News, from 2006 through 2009. His time around the program also put him in regular contact with Nick Saban.
The two often went back and forth during the early years of Saban’s tenure. After Saban retired in early 2024, Rapoport looked back on their history and some of the tension that came with it.
One small detail became a regular source of irritation for Alabama fans. Rapoport usually called Saban “Nick” during press conferences instead of “Coach Saban.” Fans took issue with it and often went after him on Alabama message boards.
What bothered Saban was not the use of his first name. It was how Rapoport handled press conferences. Rapoport would sit in the front row and make a point of getting the first question. He also went after topics he knew Saban would rather avoid.
Saban became so frustrated with it that he would sometimes cut in and ask, “Why doesn’t Cecil [veteran reporter Cecil Hurt] get the first question?” Their back-and-forth was hard to miss, and Rapoport has openly acknowledged that they clashed.
In a 2024 social media post, he called covering Alabama “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.” He also summed up their relationship simply: “We battled. He made me a better reporter. I made him mad.”
By 2009, Rapoport said the constant back-and-forth had started to wear them both down. He recalled that “annoying each other for theater wasn’t that fun” anymore.
The two eventually sat down in private. They talked through their issues and “put it all out on the table.” From there, they agreed to leave the tension behind and find a way to work around each other.
When Rapoport left Alabama in 2009 to cover Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, he joked with Saban about putting in a good word for him.
Saban smiled and shot back, “You want me to call up my best friend in the world and [expletive] lie to him?” In truth, Saban always had a tense relationship with the media.
So much so that he even called their praise “rat poison” for his players. After Alabama’s messy 27-19 win at Texas A&M in October 2017, Saban believed the constant praise around his unbeaten team had started to affect his players.
He felt they were getting too comfortable and losing focus. “All that stuff you write about how good we are, all that stuff they hear on ESPN, it’s like poison,” Saban said. That comment gave college football one of its most recognizable Saban phrases: “rat poison.”
Years later, Saban is now part of the same media world he once warned his players about, working as an ESPN analyst on College GameDay.