ESPN
When University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban is not on campus coaching his players, he spends a lot of his time at a lake house on Lake Burton in the north Georgia mountains.
While Saban has an annual salary of $6.9 million and the house is worth millions, he is living proof that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.
Saban, who grew up in a small town in West Virginia, has a daily routine at the Lake House that includes jumping into the lake with a bar of soap and taking a bath.
ESPN’s Marty Smith spent some time with Saban at the lake house, along with fellow ESPN analyst Tim Tebow. However, one of the best details Smith learned during the trip was one that didn’t make it on air.
Smith recently discussed some of the unprecedented access he has been granted with Saban and the Alabama football team on ESPN Radio’s “The Dan Le Batard Show,” noting that his best time was at the lake house.
“Definitely the lake house [is the best access I have had], no question the lake house,” Smith told Le Batard. “Him telling me that he takes a bath in that lake … His daily routine is to go play golf and then he comes down off the hill and he jumps into the lake with a bar of soap and starts scrubbing himself.”
Smith’s access to Saban is so great, that he actually got the 65-year-old Saban and Tebow to jump off a second-floor dock into the lake.
As Smith explained, that was actually a terrifying leap. Saban was supposed to jump to the right and Tebow was supposed to jump to the left, with Smith jumping straight. However, as you can see in the video, Saban and Tebow both jump straight and Smith nearly jumped on top of both of them.
That story would have probably trumped taking a bath.
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