Was there an ulterior motive for Nick Saban’s Coach Prime comments?

Nick Saban was highly complimentary of Coach Prime on September 20 in response to Deion Sanders’ own adulation for the Alabama coaching legend during an interview that premiered on 60 Minutes on September 17.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Deion Sanders,” Saban said (h/t ESPN). “First, he’s a great person and he’s done a great job of marketing the program to create a lot of national interest. But I see their team playing well on the field. They play with discipline, they do a good job of executing, they’ve been able to score points, playing decent on defense. So all those things, to me, are indicators that he’s a really good coach.”

Sanders had claimed that he “loved and adored” the time he spent filming AFLAC commercials with Saban to 60 Minutes’s Jon Wertheim.

“I love and I adore and I respect and every time I do a commercial with Coach Saban — it’s a gift,” Sanders prefaced before saying, “Just sitting in his presence and hearing him and throwing something else out there so I can hear his viewpoint on it, because he’s forgotten more things than I may ever accomplish.”

Is there an ulterior motive for Nick Saban’s Coach Prime comments?

What is all this flattery about? Does this signal Saban’s blessing for Coach Prime to succeed him in Tuscaloosa? Is Sanders himself trying to butter up to the Alabama faithful in hopes of making the jump to the winningest program in the College Football Playoff era?

It could. But in reality, Sanders was always going to have to talk about Saban by virtue of being a college football coach in the spotlight. And Saban wrapped Coach Prime into his world by implying that Sanders, and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, paid for their recruiting classes back in 2022. Now that “Prime Time” has arrived fully, those questions were always going to come.

Plus, and perhaps most importantly, there’s some Power Five football to promote and profit from.