President Donald Trump revealed the questions Nick Saban and Urban Meyer asked him when the three played golf together last Sunday during his recent appearance on Josh Pate’s College Football Show podcast. Trump, an avid golfer before and during his presidency, actually says he didn’t talk too much college football with the two legendary coaches.
In fact, to hear Trump tell it, Saban and Meyer were far more interested political matters, including international affairs, when they were in the President’s company.
“They want talk to me about politics, really more so than football,” Trump told Pate last week during a visit to northwest Georgia. “They like politics. They’re all obviously very highly competitive people, but I would say for the most part, we’re talking politics. They want to know what’s happening with Iran, what’s happening … why did you do that with Venezuela?
“It was pretty good. You know, that was very, very successful, to put it mildly. But they always want to seem to (talk politics), because I play with a lot of athletes, a lot of coaches,” Trump continued. “I play golf. I’m a good golfer, and some of them are good. Some of them aren’t very good, but doesn’t matter. One thing (when) you golf, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why they have handicaps. But they always want to talk about politics.”
President Donald Trump reveals conversations with Nick Saban, Urban Meyer
Saban and Meyer didn’t just join Trump on the course. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also played 18 holes with the group earlier this month at Trump’s West Palm Beach (Fla.) course, according to White House pool reporter Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal‘s Alex Leary.
Trump has long been a fan of Saban following Alabama’s multiple White House visits to celebrate national championships during his first term. Trump even named the seven-time national champion head coach as a co-chair of a never-realized presidential commission on college sports last June.
In 2020, President Trump appointed Meyer to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. Despite their brief forays into the political realm, Meyer insisted that his and Saban’s conversations on the golf course remained bipartisan.
“It was an awesome day. Awesome. Sense of humor and also real serious conversation,” Meyer said recently on The Triple Option. “It’s interesting to get Coach Saban’s take, my take, who has been in it for so long. And then Governor DeSantis, I think he told me he was the first governor that signed NIL, allowing that to happen, so he’s got his hands on a lot of stuff.
“This conversation is all bipartisan. It happens that one is a Republican president, one’s a very conservative governor of our state. Coach Saban and I were there as guests, and it was all about our thoughts on how to make this thing better.”
— On3’s Alex Byington and Grant Grubbs contributed to this report.