Those expecting Alabama football coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M counterpart Jimbo Fisher to hurl chairs or jump from the turnbuckle during Tuesday’s start to the Southeastern Conference’s spring meetings in Destin, Florida, came away disappointed.
“They weren’t wrestling in there. I can tell you that,” LSU first-year coach Brian Kelly told reporters.
The SEC meetings, which are being held in Destin again for the first time since 2019, marked the first gathering of coaches since Saban and Fisher feuded publicly two weeks ago over the name, image and likeness landscape. Saban stated in Birmingham that the Aggies “bought every player” in their top-rated signing class, which caused Fisher to hold a news conference and exclaim it was “despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way.”
On Tuesday, Saban was asked in a news conference what evidence he had that Texas A&M paid for its class.
“I didn’t really say that anybody did anything wrong,” Saban said. “I didn’t say anybody did anything wrong, and I’ve said everything I’m going to say about this. I should have never mentioned any individual institutions, but some kind of uniform name, image and likeness standard that supports some kind of equitable, national competition I think is really, really important in college athletics and in college football.