Nick Saban On Les Miles: ‘One Of The Most Respected Colleagues We’ve Had’


Alabama head coach Nick Saban said that recently-fired Les Miles is one of the most respected colleagues in the college coaching business.


In 2003, Nick Saban took LSU to its first national title since 1958. After he left for the Miami Dolphins, in came Les Miles, who three years later brought another title back to Baton Rouge. Since 2007, when Saban took the head coaching job at Alabama, he and Miles have been on opposite sidelines of some classic SEC battles, including a BCS National Championship game.

That fierce rivalry is now dead, as Miles was dismissed from LSU on Sunday after eleven-plus seasons on the job. Despite the competition between the two coaches, Saban has nothing but respect for his foe.

“First of all, Les Miles is one of the most respected colleagues in terms of the rivalry that we’ve had, the competition that we’ve had, the great teams that they’ve had,” Saban said in his weekly press conference. “I kind of hated that a man wins a national championship, wins two SEC titles and doesn’t make it through the season. It is what it is, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for Les Miles and what he was able to accomplish there, the number of wins he had.”

Miles had a record of 114-34 during his tenure in Baton Rouge, but not living up to the extremely high expectations of Tigers fans finally caught up with him after starting the 2016 season, one in which LSU was supposed to compete for the national title, 2-2.

“I guess this is the time that we live in, everybody needs to know that, but it doesn’t minimize to any degree the amount of respect that I have for the job that Les Miles did at LSU, the great competitive teams that he’s had there for a long, long time and the amount of success that he’s had,” Saban said.

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