Greg McElroy Talks Nick Saban's Impact at Alabama When Hired

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00:00What was the building like when Mike Shula was out and Nick Saban got tired?

00:07Do you remember where you were?

00:09What was the sentiment from the team?

00:11Was everybody like, I guess this is awesome?

00:13We're all popping champagne bottles or were you like, oh gosh, are we safe?

00:17We were fired up.

00:19We were super fired up.

00:20What's funny though is that Coach Saban was at LSU and I was very early in the recruiting

00:26process starting to hear from LSU and I'm like, heck yeah.

00:31Coach Saban, Matt Mock was the quarterback.

00:34I'm kind of similar in skill set, similar in style, like former baseball player, like

00:39all right, yeah.

00:41This place would make a lot of sense for me and then Coach Saban left, it's like all right,

00:44well that ship sailed.

00:46Les Miles came in, I'm like yeah, not a good fit.

00:50So I ended up going to Bama with Mike Shula who was a quarterback coach who had just won

00:5710 games the year before, had just won the Cotton Bowl, felt like Alabama had some momentum.

01:03Our recruiting class was like a top 10 class in the country.

01:06In our recruiting class there, the 06 class, we had a couple guys that went on to become

01:10great players.

01:11Javier Arenas and Andre Smith who was a top prospect at a high school, a tackle, yeah.

01:18A handful of others and fast forward, we had a terrible year and then Coach Shula gets

01:24fired and we're like, well damn, like what are we going to do?

01:27You know what I mean?

01:28Like is it going to be Rich Roderiguez?

01:29Greg went back to the SAE house is what he did.

01:32Yeah, I was not an SAE at that point, that was a second year pledge.

01:36I didn't know what the deal was like with the frat thing, like that was a foreign concept

01:41and I got to Bama, I was like, hang on, you're not in a frat?

01:43I'm like, no.

01:44They're like, well you should be.

01:45I'm like, oh, okay.

01:46I didn't know that that was like a thing.

01:49That's amazing.

01:50Yeah.

01:51All right.

01:52Starting quarterback at Alabama, also in SAE, how you doing?

01:55Greg McElroy.

01:56You know, I wasn't the starting quarterback when I pledged and I'll be honest with you,

01:59my pledge ship basically was like, Hey, you want to come over and throw passes to the

02:03new boys?

02:04Like, yeah, it sounds like a good deal.

02:07Like I wasn't doing bows and toes, bro.

02:09Like it was pretty, I always told him, I'm like, dude, my pledge ship is, my pledge ship

02:15is at the football facility.

02:17All right.

02:18Like I go through four years of pledge ship, dude, and I still see some of my pledge brothers

02:22around town now, but long story short, like, yeah, pledge ship was football.

02:27But looking at, looking at coach, coach Shula getting fired, it's like, this thing could

02:31go a lot of different ways, man.

02:32He was fired at like around Thanksgiving and coach Saban did not get hired until January

02:383rd.

02:39When Nick Saban retired and Kaelin DeBoer was hired, it was like 72 hours, maybe less.

02:44It was like 58 hours and people were freaking out.

02:48Imagine going like 58 days is about what it felt like feeling as though that search would

02:54never come to an end.

02:56And finally we found out it was coach Saban and we're all jacked, dude.

02:58I mean, we were so fired up.

03:00We knew it was going to be miserable though.

03:01I mean, it was, it was awful.

03:03Like, I mean, the, the first year was awful.

03:06Uh, he was basically just testing us like, all right, we're going to basically go through

03:11a process that was be comparable to military training to see whether or not you're going

03:19to be up to the task.

03:20Like, we're going to put you through things that you never thought you could handle.

03:23And if you survive, uh, and you're with us, it's going to be worth it.

03:26Cause we're going to win a lot of games, but it's going to be awful here for this first

03:29calendar year.

03:30And it was, but, um, we came out the other side as a pretty cohesive unit.

03:33We, those that weren't all in were cast away and all of a sudden, you know, we became a

03:39pretty good group a couple of years later.

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