In January, Nick Saban sent shock waves through the college football landscape when he announced he would step away from the sidelines. Shortly after the legendary coach retired, Saban officially joined ESPN. 

While Saban works primarily as an analyst for the network’s long-running and popular pregame program, “College GameDay,” he also contributes to NFL Draft coverage and makes appearances on other ESPN shows and platforms. The last segment of an episode of “College GameDay” typically features a celebrity guest who offers their picks for some of the upcoming games.

On Friday, comedian Shane Gillis was tapped as the guest picker. But at one point during his appearance, one of the funnyman’s jokes seemed to irritate Saban.

During a discussion about the state of college football, Gillis cited the relatively new “parity” that exists in the sport. But during his remarks, Gillis also seemed to assert that either Saban or perhaps the Alabama football program as a whole orchestrated or turned a blind eye if players received improper payments.

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“This feels different, it feels like we can win it,” Gillis said. “There’s a parity, now that everybody can pay their players, Notre Dame has a shot. It’s not just the SEC, it’s not Coach Saban.” The seven-time national championship winning coach was not present when Gillis made the comments.

Comedian Shane Gillis is shown before the Indiana-Notre Dame game on Dec. 20, 2024, in South Bend, Ind. (Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

However, fellow ESPN college football analyst Pat McAfee eventually reminded Gillis about what he said.

“You called him a cheater earlier,” McAfee noted.

While Gillis said he made the comments in jest, Saban appeared to take offense to the suggestion that players were inappropriately compensated under his watch. 

“I was just joking around,” Gillis said. “I don’t think the SEC paid players. Ever. I’m joking. Is this not a fun show?”

Nick Saban speaks during ESPN’s “College GameDay,” Dec. 20, 2024, in South Bend, Ind. (MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

Gillis eventually turned his attention to Saban’s attire, particularly the retired coach’s hat.

“Ol’ Alabama Jones is being serious,” Gillis joked in an apparent reference to the hat that has become synonymous with the fictional character Indiana Jones.

Saban then offered a straightforward response to Gillis’ joke concerning how he ran the Alabama program during his 17-year run.

“I do believe in integrity. I always tried to run the program that way so players had a better chance to be successful in life,” Saban said. “We make more money in the NFL than any other school, 61 players in the league. That was how we cheated. We developed players.”

Saban won six national titles during his storied tenure in Tuscaloosa. Before taking the head coaching job at Alabama, Saban led the LSU Tigers to the BCS National Championship Game after the 2003 regular season.

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EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —  The florescent green cleats of Kyren Williams could be seen from space.

But it was the feet inside those shoes that set the tone Sunday in the Rams’ 19-9 victory over the New York Jets.

In this final stretch before the NFL playoffs, when the weather turns as bitter cold as it was at MetLife Stadium, it’s essential for teams to be able to run the football. Williams did that for the Rams, gaining 122 yards in 23 carries at a robust average of 5.3 yards a pop.

“It’s a security blanket,” Rams right tackle Rob Havenstein said. “There’s a ton of good rush fronts out there in the league, but to be able to run the ball and kind of dictate how we want to play offense because we can run the ball, that’s something that doesn’t just show up on game day. It’s something we work really hard on during the week.”

The numbers weren’t splashy. The highlights were sparse. But for the Rams to travel across the country for a 10 a.m. body-clock kickoff, with temperatures in the teens, this workmanlike win was a resounding statement: This team is capable of doing some damage in the playoffs.

Twenty-three carries is a full plate — the Rams only had a 50 offensive plays — but it was fewer than Williams had in his previous two games, when he had 29 and 29.

“Not quite 29,” coach Sean McVay quipped, “so he’s fresh.”

Fresh as the opportunities unfurling before the team. With the Rams winning, and Arizona losing at Carolina, the once-surging Cardinals have been eliminated from the playoff picture. They play the Rams at SoFi Stadium on Saturday night, and figure to be less formidable with running back James Conner dealing with an apparent knee injury that sidelined him in the second half Sunday.

So the NFC West race comes down to the Rams and Seattle, who play in a season finale in Los Angeles. The Rams have the upper hand at this point, with a better record after the Seahawks lost to the Vikings on Sunday and already having won at Seattle.

Meanwhile, the Jets are a mess, not news to the thousands of disgruntled fans streaming to the MetLife exits throughout the second half.

They have fired their coach and general manager, and seem to have handed the decision-making to quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who went for it on fourth down five times and converted two against the Rams.

According to ESPN, the Jets are the first team in 25 years to not punt in a game and still be held to fewer than 10 points.

What’s more, every one of their offensive linemen was flagged for a penalty, and there were six of those players since the Jets had to sub in a replacement for their injured left tackle. Dutifully, fill-in Max Mitchell checked the box with a false start just before the two-minute warning.

And to think the game began with such promise for the home team, the Jets assembling their first 99-yard scoring drive in eight years on their opening possession.

The Rams tightened the screws after that and surrendered only a field goal. Not to say it was a pristine defensive performance, though, as the tackling still needs to be better to increase the chance of survival in the postseason.

In many respects, it was a weird game that — thanks to all the running — glided by with the speed of time-lapse photography. The Rams were already in the fourth quarter while some teams were still waiting to start the second half.

The game went so quickly, in fact, that the NFL had to pump the brakes with commercials. The league doesn’t like to go commercial-kickoff-commercial, yet it had to do that three times in Rams-Jets in order to fill the three-hour window.

Rams Braden Fiske (55) and Jared Verse (8) converge to sack Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8).

(Adam Hunger / Associated Press)

The Jets had the ball for the final 6 minutes, 22 seconds of the first half, then — because they received the kickoff to start the second half — held it for the first 10 minutes of the third quarter.

“I was like, ‘I haven’t played football in 30 minutes,’” Havenstein said. “This wasn’t the game to get tight out there. You ain’t gonna get warmed up any time.”

That was definitely the feeling on the visitors’ sideline.

“We were huddled up against that heater on the sideline, that’s all you could do,” Rams guard Kevin Dotson said. “We’re not used to it. It was like 12 degrees, 13, and it seemed to get even colder at the end. I’m from Louisiana, so I’m thin-skinned. That cold is different.

“As offensive linemen they tell you, ‘Don’t wear sleeves.’ I gotta wear sleeves. I won’t be the same person if I don’t wear sleeves. I put my sleeves on and just go hard enough where they can’t say, ‘Oh, he’s soft.’”

The strong performance on the ground was a testament not only to Williams but also to a stalwart Rams offensive line that only recently has come together as intended with the starters all getting healthy (enough) to operate in lockstep.

As for those bright green shoes Williams was wearing? They were the Nike Vapor Edge Kobe “Grinch” cleats, an homage to one of his all-time favorite athletes.

Grinch makes sense. For the Jets, he unquestionably stole Christmas.

With its clay terraces, the ochre-coloured Stade El Harti in Marrakech’s bustling Gueliz district is a venue that neatly demonstrates the transformation in Moroccan football over the past decade.

Until 2010, it was the 10,000-capacity home to Kawkab Athletique Club de Marrakech, a middle-ranking side who could not wait to move to a 45,000-seater stadium on the other side of the city, built originally for the World Cup that summer which instead was hosted by South Africa.

For the next eight years, a largely redundant El Harti felt like it belonged to a lost age. Yet as the Moroccan state realised how useful football could be and started investing heavily in the sport, it found that something old might also be something valuable.

In 2018, El Harti was reopened, after a new irrigation system was installed, along with lighting and a sweep of blue and red seats. The development means Marrakesh now has an infrastructure that makes it a potential destination when other African international teams and clubs visit Morocco for training camps and tournaments — just one example of a wider strategy to harness football as a way of making friends and influencing people on their own continent and beyond.

This is a big five years for Africa’s fifth richest country.

A year from now, Morocco will host the African Cup of Nations for just the second time in its history, and the first since 1988. In 2030, it will be one of the three main co-hosts for the men’s World Cup, along with Spain and Portugal (three other countries, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay will stage one-off matches to mark the 100th anniversary of the inaugural tournament, played in Uruguay). It will be only the second time an African country will have staged games in the tournament, following South Africa 2010. 

Just outside Casablanca, the sprawling port city which is Morocco’s economic and business centre, a new stadium is being constructed — the Grand Stade Hassan II which, with a planned capacity of 115,000, will be the largest football ground in the world and a symbol of the country’s new-found status as one of the world game’s emerging powers. Many in the country have not given up hope the stadium — widely reported to have cost around $500million (£398m), although precise figures are vague — will stage the tournament’s final.

It does not end there. Before that World Cup, Morocco is also scheduled to host the next five editions of the Under-17 Women’s World Cup, annually from 2025, and, in April, capital city Rabat is expected to host the next World Football Summit, a meeting involving the game’s leaders and industry experts.

It is some journey for a country that did not qualify for the World Cup for two decades until 2018, before reaching the competition’s semi-finals two years ago. And this journey is unlikely to end in 2030.

Morocco has big plans for football — and it feels like a country in a hurry.

Like one of the cool courtyards known as riads that shelter beyond the ancient doors and steep walls in the souks of Marrakech’s famed Medina quarter, the El Harti offers sanctuary from the choking roads around it.

Last Monday, however, the ground was a hive of activity, hosting a friendly match between local and international legends sides ahead of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) awards ceremony being held just down the road at the Palais des Congres. It was closed to the public, but the stadium was swarmed by people courtesy of a presidential-style safety operation involving auxiliary command and shades-wearing guards from private security firm G4S.

Patrice Motsepe, president of CAF, and FIFA president Gianni Infantino were supposed to be on the guest list, but neither showed up. Instead, the only figure with an official title involved in the kickabout worked in the CAF press office.

Infantino would though spend his evening in the auditorium of the Palais, flanked by Motsepe on one side and two Moroccans on the other — Aziz Akhannouch, the country’s prime minister, and Fouzi Lekjaa, one of the most influential men in African football.

Lekjaa is president of the Moroccan FA and one of Africa’s most powerful football figures (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

Having assumed office as the president of the Royal Moroccan Football Association in 2014, Lekjaa was elected to FIFA’s council in 2021, the year he also became Morocco’s “minister delegate of the budget” on the recommendation of Akhannouch — a role which essentially means he has the keys to the country’s safe.

The highly respected Lekjaa is a technocrat and was appointed without being affiliated to any party or movement. He earned the responsibility out of politics. Akhannouch proposed his job title, which was subsequently approved by King Mohammed VI.

Lekjaa has the potential to have a significant impact on Morocco’s economic and political landscape. Ultimately, any country’s position on football does not change without political will even if, according to FIFA, this can only happen within its rules, which forbid “government interference of any kind”. 

Motsepe, who made his billions in the minerals industry, talked rather loosely about the wider environment in which he is operating, using his fists to emphasise the valuable points he wished to get across, including thanking figures such as Lekjaa for his role in “developing African football”.

The ceremony ended up celebrating the continent’s politicians almost as much as it did its footballers, with Motsepe and Infantino, described by one of the hosts as “the stars of the show”, handing out “outstanding achievement” awards to not one but two sitting African presidents, though neither of Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Paul Biya of Cameroon turned up to collect them. 

Motsepe wanted to send a message to all 54 African heads of state that “success comes from them”. As far as he is concerned, if countries support football by building stadiums and creating an environment where players are paid well, “then we will keep them in Africa”. Infantino nodded his head in agreement. 

Despite being on the edge of Africa geographically (eight nautical miles from Spain at the nearest point), Morocco has made itself a central hub for the continent in football terms — a position strengthened by the announcement on Monday that FIFA will open its first permanent African headquarters in Marrakech. FIFA also has regional bureaus in Senegal and Rwanda and it expects Marrakech will act like its branches in Paris and the U.S. city of Miami, which have recently become more influential, controlling commercial and legal services across Europe and the Americas.

FIFA president Infantino reveals Morocco as one of the 2030 World Cup co-hosts (Harold Cunningham – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

This development followed a press release from Morocco’s ministry of tourism on the same morning that claimed the country was on track to overtake north African neighbour Egypt as the region’s most visited destination. By the end of November, Morocco had already beaten its yearly target of 15 million tourists by almost a million. The ministry predicts that football will stimulate interest and economic growth: it wants to attract 17m tourists by 2026 and 26m by 2030.

These are ambitious numbers, but Morocco is clearly not lacking in confidence.

A cavalcade of people-carriers escorted the nominees and their families to the towering entrance of the Palais, which was decked out entirely in black and gold rigging like a Las Vegas hotel ahead of a big fight. The only sour note was sounded when it was revealed that Ademola Lookman of Nigeria had been voted the Men’s African Player of the Year, beating the Moroccan candidate Achraf Hakimi.

After gasps in the audience, many got up and started to leave before Lookman, born in south London, was able to start his acceptance speech.

For Morocco and Lekjaa, perhaps this will act as a valuable reminder: if you promote something as enthusiastically as this country has, it is better to win.

Before earning the rights to 2030, Morocco had five failed attempts at hosting the World Cup, starting in 1994.

It has long been an internationalist and ambitious country, but until recently has struggled to convince neighbours and nations further afield alike of its potential.

Morocco’s approach changed a decade ago after it made the late decision to pull out of hosting the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), scheduled for early 2015, because of fears about the spread of the Ebola virus, a decision that antagonised its neighbours, who accused the country of caring more about European tourism than its own continent.

Morocco did not have a member on the CAF executive committee to defend its case and was fined €8million (£6.6m/$8.3m at current exchange rates) by the continental body and had its national team banned from competing in the 2017 and 2019 editions of AFCON, held in Gabon and Egypt. 

Quickly, Moroccan officials realised what it had lost.

Earlier that year, the country had closely watched events beyond its eastern border in Algeria, whose national team was stirring excitement on a run to the last 16 of the World Cup in Brazil, where they were narrowly beaten 2-1 by eventual champions Germany after extra time.

It would be understandable if there was some jealousy in Morocco, which had not qualified for a World Cup since 1998. It had also underachieved at AFCON, with its most recent, and only, title coming in 1976 (which is still the case).

Morocco’s appearance at the 1998 World Cup was its last for 20 years (AllsportUK /Allsport)

A change in direction was needed and football — previously viewed as simply part of the entertainment industry — became a political priority. 

And the man at the front of that change was Lekjaa.

His decision to pivot Morocco’s focus back to Africa ensured that ruling to exclude the country from the next two AFCONs was eased, with participation in 2017 allowed. In a couple of years, Morocco spent around €80million on football infrastructure projects and though that investment has since increased further, it has learnt to be more discreet about the numbers involved due to the threat of populist pushback, with other sectors requiring financial attention from the state.

An opportunity also presented itself when the CAF president of 29 years, Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou, was surprisingly ousted at the organisation’s general congress after a string of corruption allegations and criticism over a television rights deal which guaranteed a huge sum of money to CAF.

Hayatou was, surprisingly, replaced by Madagascar’s Ahmad Ahmad, but in reality, his vice-presidents had as much, if not more, power than him and what followed was one of the most chaotic periods in CAF history, with stories leaking almost every month of alleged impropriety within the organisation. 

As it became clear Ahmad would not be in place for long, Morocco quietly set about positioning itself as the grown-up in the room. 

This involved initially offering to host a series of CAF symposiums where members gathered to discuss new ideas. Other, loss-making events would follow, but when Motsepe replaced Ahmad in 2021 following the latter’s own corruption scandal, it became very clear to other nations that Morocco was serious about its continental role. This mattered when it came to votes during CAF elections as well as FIFA votes.

In 2022, Morocco became the first African or Arab nation to reach a World Cup semi-final. It was widely hailed as one of the competition’s great underdog stories, capturing hearts and minds well beyond the continent, but it did not happen by accident.

While the seductive appeal of football has meant the country could engage with the rest of the world, its newfound position was only possible because of huge investment in sports facilities which, according to Simon Chadwick, a professor in sport and geographical economy, had “never been seen in Europe or, more recently, the Middle East”.

One of the most striking was a $65million state-of-the-art football academy named after King Mohammed VI. The facility, located just outside Rabat, covers an area of 2.5km squared and boasts a school, medical centre and four pitches, all modelled around the layout of a traditional Moroccan douar (village). By 2017, five other regional training centres were built in different parts of the country, though the Moroccan FA did not reveal costings for each of the projects.

Post-2022, there was an acknowledgement in Morocco that the achievement of their men’s team at Qatar 2022 — topping a group containing two of the 2018 tournament’s final four in Croatia and Belgium, then beating Spain and Portugal before a semi-final loss to holders and eventual runners-up France — would not have been possible without the performances of players from the country’s diaspora.

Spanish-born Hakimi, who plays for Paris Saint-Germain, was the most high-profile example and was the poster boy of that campaign in Qatar, but nearly 70 per cent of that squad were born in Europe, are based there, or both.

Achraf Hakimi was Morocco’s star of the 2022 World Cup (Elsa/Getty Images)

Scouting has improved in Morocco, as have the facilities that can be deployed to develop local talent, but many of these players, as well as head coach Walid Regragui (who was born in Paris, and still lives there), were ultimately a product of the European system.

Though it is not as competitive as Egypt in terms of the levels of salaries being offered to players, leading Moroccan clubs, with quality infrastructures behind them, have started to fill the prime places in Africa’s continental competitions: Casablanca’s Wydad lifted the CAF Champions League in 2017 and 2022 and their city rivals Raja won the CAF Confederation Cup in 2018 and 2021 (Africa’s version of the UEFA Europa League).

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Morocco aspires to create its own footballers and, ideally, pay them well enough to play for clubs at home, as many of Egypt’s top stars do, rather than moving abroad. Of the 16 fastest-growing economies in 2024, 16 are African and with Morocco placed at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, it is handily positioned to become a regional power in the same way as Egypt has due to its connection with the Suez Canal.

Professor Chadwick says that while Morocco is not a particularly rich country, it does have the geography and resources to stimulate economic and political power. This is mainly because 70 per cent of the world’s known phosphate reserves (used in everything from food to cosmetics to electronics) are in Morocco and much of it is managed by the OCP Group, which is owned by the state and the country’s biggest employer.

Last summer, it signed a deal with the football federation and private partners to create, according to a press release issued by OCP and the government, a “national training fund dedicated to the professionalisation of training centres and the promotion of young talent”.

As a co-host in 2030, Morocco will have to spend less than it would if staging the World Cup solo, yet it is expected to receive the same benefits. When the tournament was last held on its continent, South Africa had to build new stadiums and repurpose existing ones at tremendous cost. Some of those are now white elephants 14 years on, but Morocco is confident it will not face the same problem due to the advances made over the past decade as well as the popularity of the game in the country. Whereas in South Africa football has rugby union and cricket to contend with, in Morocco, it stands alone.

In 2022, business magazine Forbes reported that Qatar had spent as much as $220billion in the dozen years since being chosen as a World Cup host in late 2010 — more than 15 times what Russia spent putting on the 2018 event. Morocco does not have the same well of money Qatar does but intends to earn back whatever it has put in to secure a major role in 2030, though it will be difficult to judge the success due to a lack of transparency over the scale of its investments.

Chadwick says that over the last 10 years, football has acted as a glue: managing the country’s image and profile through soft power and diplomacy. AFCON and the World Cup coming its way justifies all of the spending, albeit at a time when many still live under tents temporary tents in the Atlas Mountains following a devastating earthquake in 2023.

While poverty is still very visible in rural areas, Morocco accelerates with its building plans, most notably the Grand Stade Hassan II. During the CAF awards nearly three hours down the road in Marrakech, every official from the organisation, as well as journalists, were convinced the venue will host the 2030 World Cup final, ahead of Spain’s big two venues — Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu and Camp Nou in Barcelona.

Though it is clear that Morocco has used football to make friends and influence people, there is a hard-nosed element to the strategy. 

It really wants to show the rest of the world what it can do.

(Top photo: Tullio M Puglia/Getty Images)