MARLER: Some fans just can’t handle Nick Saban’s live TV profanity
03/12/2025
By Chris Marler
Two hours. That’s how long it took Nick Saban to drop his first four letter word on national television on College Gameday last season. The shocking part of that moment was not that Nick Saban cursed on live television. The shocking part was that it didn’t come sooner.
It would happen several more times throughout the season.
Regardless, not everyone loved the charm and unexpected hilarity of a Saban story that included a NSFW vocabulary word on College Gameday. More specifically, three people really didn’t find it funny.
Early Wednesday al.com’s Matt Stahl reported that there were three complaints to the FCC about Nick Saban after his on-air language during the Georgia-Texas SEC Championship episode of College Gameday on Dec. 7.
“Nick Saban said the word shit twice, bitch once and something else I can’t remember,” the complaint, obtained by AL.com via a Freedom of Information Act request to the FCC, read in part. “I tune (in) to gain knowledge and insight on college football, not to have profanity stuffed in my face by a former coach trying to be funny. It will continue until you (fine) them a million dollars or more. Chinchy fines accomplish nothing.”
Besides the level of sensitivity from the person filing the complaint, what was most surprising in the story is that none of the three complaints came from the state of Alabama.
That narrows it down to Knoxville, Tennessee, or Athens, Georgia. Then again, Auburn has one of the largest alumni networks around the Southeast as well. As an Atlanta resident, I can attest that there are more Auburn fans in Atlanta than there are in Auburn.
The funniest part of this story is, by far, the second sentence.
“I tune in to gain knowledge and insight on college football.”
Not sure how to tell the anonymous-sensitive-Sally this, but how did you tune in solely to gain knowledge about college football before or after Pat McAfee stood on his chair, took his shirt off, and inevitably made an inappropriate pun about South Carolina’s mascot or told the crowd to sing “Neck” at LSU?
Either way, I speak for everyone when I say I hope now that it’s March, you’ve healed from abhorrent language on your television. I also hope you don’t find out about the internet anytime soon, because oh buddy are you not ready for that.
Regardless, now we can wait to see if the FCC responds, or if the complaint goes in one ear and out the other. You know, just like **** through a tin horn as Nick Saban would say.
