Alabama Coach Nick Saban owns a lake house in Clayton, Ga., which might be a popular town to visit Monday. It’s one of the few cities in America that lie in the path of the total solar eclipse, meaning that, for roughly 150 seconds beginning around 2:36 p.m., anyone there with special sunglasses and an ability to angle their head upward can observe what eclipse connoisseurs dub “the sight of a lifetime.”
Of course, Saban won’t be at his lake house Monday because he has to prepare his machine of a program for its season opener Sept. 2 against Florida State.
He and the Crimson Tide will be practicing In Tuscaloosa, Ala., where the moon will produce slightly more than 90 percent visible blockage of the sun — still a rare sight for college kids who weren’t alive the last time a total solar eclipse was visible anywhere in America (February, 1979).
A reporter asked Saban after his team’s scrimmage Saturday whether the Tide would take any precautions to prevent eye damage when taking in the eclipse. Saban responded with the enthusiasm of someone who is looking to buy a new muffler for his car.
“We’ll set it up so if the players want to go out there and get some sunglasses and look at it, I guess they can,” he said in his patented monotone. “That’s not something that I’m really that focused on right now. I watch the Weather Channel every day and they already said what it’s going to look like in every city in America. So what’s going to be significant? If you watch the Weather Channel, you can see what it’s going to be like in Portland, Oregon. Clayton, Georgia, is the number one place in the country to have 100 percent … my house there is probably going to be the only empty house on the lake.”
Saban, 65, said he watches the Weather Channel “every day,” and it informed him how the eclipse will look everywhere in America, touting the Weather Channel as the place to go for all solar eclipse appreciation.
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“So, I’ma watch it on TV,” Saban continued. “Maybe we should have a team meeting about how we’re going to do this; I haven’t thought about it yet.”
The Crimson Tide have seven home games this season. Surely, Saban won’t tell 100,000-plus Alabama fans to stay home each week and just watch on TV.
Read more:
Titans to pause practice on Monday to watch total eclipse as a team
A reporter’s question is catnip to Alabama’s Nick Saban, who goes off on another classic rant
Nick Saban’s ‘far out’ scheduling plan would be great for Alabama, less so for everyone else
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