Alabama Crimson Tide safety Jordan Battle gave the college football world a wonderful gift on Wednesday when he provided some insight into the kind of humor that often-stoic head coach Nick Saban appreciates during practice. Namely, his affinity for “Deez nuts” jokes.
https://twitter.com/ByCasagrande/status/1437851387753345025
“He’s always talking about ‘touch Deez’ or ‘suck on Deez.’ All that.”
This actually isn’t new information, believe it or not. Former Alabama RB Josh Jacobs and then-current Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa shared similar insight during an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show in 2019.
The hilarity around Nick Saban, of all people, going around telling “Deez nuts” jokes were just too good to ignore any longer. And so, the topic came up during Saban’s weekly call-in show on Thursday. The coach went on to try to explain himself in a long-winded way that tried its best to dance around the specifics but certainly made it clear that there’s a Nick Saban the public knows and a Nick Saban his players know.
https://twitter.com/MichaelWBratton/status/1438667494605086723
“Well, you know, I do this kinda joking around a lot of times with the players. You know, I enjoy it. It’s fun. Especially when we’re, like, having flex, or whatever. And you have these things that sort of become habits with different players…so I have a couple of my pet peeves, but most of ’em are, you know, to anybody’s imagination what ‘this’ is, what ‘these’ are, so it doesn’t mean…it’s whatever you think it is. Now if you think it’s something bad, then it’s something bad. But it doesn’t have to be anything bad. It can be whatever you think it is.”
“I’d like to get ol’ Jordan back.”
That…doesn’t really make any sense? And yet it makes perfect sense given what we know about Saban and how he wants to project things. As far as “Deez” kinds of jokes, we’ll just keep thinking what we think it means and that’s just fine with it.
And good luck to Jordan the rest of the week in practice. Sounds like you’re gonna need it.
[SEC Mike]
