Finebaum: Ex-Auburn star’s head coach can replace Nick Saban at Alabama
Paul Finebaum fired off quite the prediction when he tabbed former Auburn football star Bo Nix’s current head coach at Oregon, Dan Lanning, as the successor to Nick Saban as the HC of the Alabama Crimson Tide one day.
“Dan Lanning yesterday, both with his coaching on the field and with his comments at halftime and after the game, he has now emerged as one of the top coaches in the country, and a former (Nick) Saban and Kirby Smart assistant, maybe he’s a successor at Alabama one day,” Finebaum said (h/t Saturday Down South).
In backing up his previous trash-talk and knocking off Deion Sanders’s Colorado Buffaloes in a 42-6 blowout, Lanning showed out on the national stage while displaying a good deal of swagger in telling viewers at home during the halftime show — one that followed a 35-0 first-half beatdown — that they better have been watching in Week 4 as they did in the first three weeks during the humbling of Coach Prime and Co.
Former Auburn football QB Bo Nix gives Oregon ‘a chance to make a very serious run’
It’s unclear how far Finebaum sees Nix’s Ducks going, but the SEC Network host did proclaim that the former Auburn football QB gives Oregon “a chance to make a very serious run” during the 2023 season.
“Don’t forget where Bo Nix began 5 years ago at Auburn starting and beating Oregon in his first game starting as a freshman,” Finebaum prefaced before saying, “And after 3 years at Auburn, he took the COVID year and then he went to Oregon and has really been spectacular. He’s the son of a quarterback, he is in command, and he gives Oregon a chance to make a very serious run.”
With a Heisman-caliber showing in Week 4 against Colorado, Nix’s star has only risen. And in transferring at the conclusion of the 2021 season, Nix avoided the blowback from a toxic behind-the-scenes situation at AU in Bryan Harsin’s final months.
The Pac-12 may be tougher than the SEC is this season, so Nix’s timing couldn’t have been better with his transfer from the Plains. He already got to be the first QB to outclass Coach Prime’s defense, and with marquee clashes ahead with Washington, Wazzu, Utah, USC, and Oregon State, the limelight may be bright enough to lift Nix to the highest of heights in college football; and then more than likely, the NFL draft’s first round too.