Alabama Crimson Tide

At start of coaching career, Saban also drove 'big-ass' Coke truck

Published Aug. 14, 2015 1:30 p.m. ET

foxsports

At this point, it's hard to picture Alabama's Nick Saban as anything other than the uber-successful, intensely demanding, never-satisfied coach he is.

But Saban was, at one time, just another graduate assistant trying to make a name for himself and pay the bills, with his first coaching job being an unpaid graduate assistant position at Kent State under eventual Hall of Fame coach Don James.

While the GA position covered his grad-school tuition payments, Saban told ESPN this week that he also had a side job -- as a Coke truck driver in Akron, Ohio.

"I was a GA at Kent State (in 1973 and 1974) under Don James. They paid for my school, so I got room, board and tuition while working on my master's degree. ... When I was a GA, I also had a job driving a Coke truck, the same when I was a junior and senior. It's hilly in the Akron area, and I'd burn up a clutch every summer. The third summer I was there, my boss said, 'This damn thing ain't a footrest.' But you're on a hill in this big-ass truck, and it starts to roll back, and you're riding that clutch as hard as you can."

Suffice it to say that Saban, whose annual salary is now $6.9 million, hasn't had to drive a delivery truck for extra cash in quite some time.

(h/t ESPN)