re: I Don't Think Saban is at Bama Next Year

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This is why he stays. He will stay to prove he can beat the new offenses before he would leave because of it.

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Kirk Herbstreit never flinched, no matter how strong the rumors surrounding Nick Saban's future grew.

A longtime friend of the Alabama coach, the ESPN college football analyst read all about the Cleveland Browns' interest in Saban in 2012 during and after the Crimson Tide's run to a second consecutive BCS National Championship. And when the sports world waited to see whether Saban would entertain the longtime interest Texas had in him, Herbstreit simply waited for the coach to announce he was staying at Alabama.

Herbstreit doesn't pretend to know when Saban will call it quits at Alabama, but he has a fairly good sense of what the coach might do next.

"Nick Saban will be on the set with us before he's a coach in the NFL," said Herbstreit, who broke the news of Saban's agreement on a new contract with Alabama in December. "I really believe that after he's done at Alabama, whenever that time is, whether it's a year, five years, whatever it is, I really believe there's an itch there about becoming an analyst."

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