The addition of former Alabama coach Nick Saban to ESPN’s College GameDay this past football season shook up the show in a myriad of ways. One of those was the amount of profanity that made it on-air, with Saban cursing even more than fellow panelist and known potty mouth Pat McAfee. Here are a couple of examples of that (language warning):
“To fine these schools $100,000 is like worrying about mouse manure when you’re up to ears in elephant shit.” – Nick Saban. pic.twitter.com/qGqUqh1MVs
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 7, 2024
“You guys keep talking about a 20 million dollar roster. If you don’t pay the right guys, you’ll be shit out of luck.” – Nick Saban
“Congratulations- you just broke the internet.” – Kirk Herbstreit pic.twitter.com/MfGXau6gyh
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 31, 2024
Some of that cursing has sparked complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. AL.com’s Matt Stahl obtained three complaints sent to the FCC about Saban this season (with one also mentioning McAfee), two from Dec. 7 and one from Jan. 10. Here’s the text of those:
“Nick Saban said the word shit twice, bitch once and something else I can’t remember,” the complaint [from a viewer in Lee’s Summit, Missouri], 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.”
…“I continually hear profanity on College Gameday which airs on ESPN,” the author, who purported to be writing from Forest City, North Carolina, said. “The show comes on at 9am to 12 noon. Children are obviously awake and can be exposed to this broadcast. Today Nick Saban used the profane word ”bullshit” on air. Most every show I watch Pat McAfee is using profanity. I don’t understand why the FCC is not (stopping) this. The window is 6am to 10pm for children sensitive programming. No one is able to sit down with their children and watch a football show without exposing them to the profanity.”
…“College Gameday announcers continue to use profanity during their prime time broadcast,” the author from Chantilly, Virginia wrote on Jan. 10. “During the Ohio State vs Texas game, Desmond Howard and Pat (McAfee) used inappropriate language for a family event. Nick Saban has used inappropriate language during a broadcast as well. If these men want to use this language, please schedule the games after 9pm.”
Of course, three complaints over the course of an entire season where Saban regularly cursed on ESPN are not a huge amount. That’s the same number of complaints the FCC received over a single double-bird gesture from Eli Manning on a 2021 ManningCast on lower-profile network ESPN2. And a variety of examples of Saban’s cursing, such as that one on the season-opening Aug. 31 show that fellow panelist Kirk Herbstreit said “broke the internet,” drew no complaints.
It’s also worth noting that there isn’t necessarily any penalty coming here for ESPN. Stahl notes that the FCC enforcement log indicates no actions taken against ESPN over this, and includes a comment from Kristi Thornton (deputy division chief of the consumer policy division of the Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau) that “a complaint or comment does not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing by any individuals or entities named in the complaint or comment.” And profanity on cable sports broadcasts has generally not led to FCC fines; profanity on broadcast TV is a larger issue, but even significantly more complaints there haven’t always produced fines.
Of course, the FCC is entering a different era at the moment. President Donald Trump appointed Brendan Carr to chair the commission in January, and the Carr-led FCC is involved in several unusual investigations. But Carr himself appeared to indicate sports profanity wasn’t his biggest priority in a February response to ESPN’s John Buccigross about Sabres’ announcer Rob Ray’s f-bomb after being hit by a puck (a trend for Ray):
I’ll allow it.
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) February 24, 2025
Still, it’s interesting to see the people bothered by Saban’s GameDay profanity, and to read the specific language of their complaints. Unless there’s a notable change in FCC policy, the actual fine-causing situation for cable sports networks is more likely to be emergency access tone misuse (an incredibly repeated issue at ESPN in particular).
The most notable part of all this, though, may be that there were only three people bothered enough by Saban’s on-air expletives this season to complain to the FCC. That doesn’t mean they were the only ones bothered. Indeed, there certainly could be others who don’t like this, but recognize that a FCC complaint is unlikely to prompt actual change. But the limited number of actual complaints here, and the utter lack of complaints for many of the instances of Saban’s on-air cursing, doesn’t seem to provide much incentive for Saban or ESPN to change tacks at all.
We’ll see if he continues to curse when GameDay returns this fall.
