Ole Miss HC Pete Golding told a hilarious story about almost getting caught slacking on the golf course by Nick Saban
If these last two games have been any indication, Ole Miss is in very good hands with head coach Pete Golding, who took over the job before the College Football Playoff after Lane Kiffin bolted for LSU. Like Kiffin, Golding comes from the Nick Saban coaching tree, just like the guy who beat him Thursday night, Miami head man Mario Cristobal, as well as the remaining two HCs in the playoff, Indiana's Curt Cignetti and Oregon's Dan Lanning.
Not surprisingly, the Saban tree was a big talking point on Thursday evening's edition of College Gameday, where the seven-time national champion has comfortably found a role on the desk next to the bombastic Pat McAfee. During one of the show's segments ahead of Ole Miss-Miami, Lanning, Cignetti and Golding all reminisced on their time under Saban at Alabama, and it was Golding who brought the goods.
"Fridays in the offseason, we've got two golf courses in Tuscaloosa," said Golding, who served on the defensive side of the ball under Saban from 2018 to 2022. "He [Saban] would sneak out [to golf] after lunch in the offseason."
So would Golding and Steve Sarkisian, Alabama's former offensive coordinator who is now the head coach at Texas. Of course, the problem with that is they were not explicitly told by Saban that they had the afternoon off, and one day they happened to sneak out on the same course Saban did. Uh oh.
"We were on hole 11, a par 3," Golding said. "We look down to the right, and we're like 'holy s--t', we look over there and it's Saban. There's a couple of branches and stuff in the way. Sark hits a hole-in-one, I s--t you not. Never hit a hole-in-one in his life. Saban is 120 yards away and we're supposed to be at work, we're not supposed to be there. So we're like, mute, jumping up, but nobody's high-fiveing, nobody's yelling. You can't make it up.
"That goes to show, the fear coach Saban would put into grown people."
When ESPN kicked it back to the live show, host Rece Davis asked Saban if he saw his pupils. Saban admitted he did, but he missed the hole-in-one, then revealed that his former defensive coordinator, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, had a much better system for evading Saban's watchful eye.
"These guys did not learn the process very well," Saban said. "Kirby's technique was that he knew the guys I played with. So as soon as I walked out the door he'd call and say 'which course you going to?', and they'd go to the other place."
No wonder Smart's already got two rings of his own. Chess, not checkers.