Nick Saban named to Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame 2020 induction class

Sean Ross

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September 19, 2019

University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban will be inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame next year.

The announcement was made in a release this week.

Saban is being inducted as the former head football coach at Louisiana State University (LSU), where he won 75% of his games and the 2003 national championship in five seasons with the Tigers.

The class of 2020 will be enshrined June 27 in Natchitoches, LA.

A 35-member Louisiana Sports Writers Association committee selected the inductees. The panel considered a record 150 nominees from 31 different sport categories on a 33-page ballot, explained Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame chairman Doug Ireland.

Here is what the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame wrote about Saban:

Saban went 48-16 from 2000-04 at LSU before jumping to the NFL for two seasons as head coach in Miami, then returning to college football at Alabama, where he has captured five more national championships since 2009. His Tigers won Southeastern Conference championships in 2001 and 2003, reigning as SEC West Division champs from 2001-03, and he won his first national and SEC coach of the year awards while guiding LSU to the 2003 BCS national crown. He is the first sitting college coach elected to the Hall since Grambling’s Eddie Robinson (1985).

Saban carved his prominent place in state sports history with the 2003 BCS national title win by his LSU squad over Oklahoma in the Superdome. His Tigers compiled a 48-16 (28-12 SEC) record in Baton Rouge, part of his 232-63-1 mark as a college head coach entering 2019.

Saban is the first coach to win a national title with two different FBS schools since the inception of the Associated Press rankings in 1936. Saban and Bear Bryant are the only coaches to win SEC crowns at different schools. His collection of national championships equals the record set by Bryant.

Among Saban’s coaching tree, former LSU assistants Jimbo Fisher, Will Muschamp and Kirby Smart are current SEC head coaches and Derek Dooley was coach at Tennessee. He is a 2013 inductee in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

Saban’s Crimson Tide have beaten LSU eight consecutive times, with the Tigers last winning on November 5, 2011.

UA’s football program celebrated Saban’s coming induction in a tweet on Wednesday.