Joel Klatt thinks Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft should make his first call to Nick Saban.
Not because it’ll work. Not because Saban is coming back. But because it’s what you do when one of the biggest jobs in college football opens up. You aim as high as possible, even if the answer is no, before you move down the list.
Klatt laid out his approach for Penn State’s coaching search during Wednesday’s episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd, starting with the wildest swing imaginable and working backward from there.
Penn State fired James Franklin on Sunday after the Nittany Lions dropped three straight games and fell to 3-3. Franklin went 4-21 against top-10 opponents in his 12 seasons, including 1-18 against top-10 Big Ten teams in conference play. His contract carried a $49 million buyout, the second-largest in college football history behind Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million at Texas A&M. Penn State is eating it.
Kraft said Monday that the program is aiming for a National Championship and will target someone capable of maximizing elite-level resources, attacking the transfer portal, and developing players at the highest level. Klatt believes that search should start with Saban, even if the 73-year-old has shown no real indication he’s returning to coaching after retiring from Alabama following the 2023 season.
“Well, I think that Pat Kraft, the Athletic Director at Penn State, is going to take a big swing,” Klatt said. “I don’t think that anybody is off of his list, to be quite honest with you. And if I was Pat Kraft, I would start with the biggest swing possible. I know this sounds crazy, but I think the first call I would make is Nick Saban. Just make sure that that’s not going to happen.”
“If I was Pat Kraft, I would start with the biggest swing possible. I know this sounds crazy, but I think the first call I would make is Nick Saban.” – Joel Klatt on Penn State’s coaching search pic.twitter.com/eKdoQx7zyD
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 15, 2025
Klatt acknowledged Penn State is a good job, but stopped short of calling it a great one. Though, in this particular hiring cycle, it’s probably the best opportunity available. The program just invested over $700 million in renovating Beaver Stadium. The resources are there. The tradition is there. The recruiting base is there. Penn State made the College Football Playoff last season before everything fell apart this year.
“Again, this is a good job,” Klatt said. “I don’t know if it’s a great job in college football. But, in this cycle, it’s probably the best.”
That’s where the Saban logic comes in, even if it sounds absurd on the surface. The 73-year-old has consistently downplayed any rumors about returning to coaching since retiring from Alabama. During a Fox & Friends appearance in July, he joked that the only time he considered coaching again was when his wife asked him to run the sweeper downstairs.
“There is no opportunity that I know of right now that would entice me to go back to coaching,” Saban said at the time. “I enjoy what I’m doing. I did it for 50 years, I loved it. I loved the relationships with the players. I loved the competition. But it’s another station of life now.”
Saban has said he enjoys working as an adviser to Alabama and as a college football analyst for ESPN. He likes spending time with his family and grandchildren. But he’s also stopped short of saying definitively that he’s done. The “right now” qualifier leaves the door slightly cracked, which is all the opening speculation needs. And that means Saban can’t shake the coaching rumors no matter how many times he bats them down.
Greg McElroy floated the idea over the summer, citing someone “very much in the know” who believed Saban hadn’t coached his final game. McElroy took heat for it, with Saban himself joking that if McElroy had done something like that as a player at Alabama, “he would have gotten his ass kicked.” Lane Kiffin suggested Saban might coach again. Nick Wright connected him to the Cincinnati Bengals. Colin Cowherd linked him to the Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns, and New Orleans Saints.
None of it has gone anywhere, and it probably won’t. But Klatt’s point isn’t that Saban will say yes. It’s that Kraft needs to make the call anyway. Penn State represents one of the best openings in this cycle, and if the program is serious about competing for championships, it makes sense to at least ask Saban if he’s interested.
The answer will almost certainly be no, but asking costs nothing.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.