The mother of professional and college football coaching legend Nick Saban has passed away, according to a report in a local Alabama newspaper.
An obituary in the Tuscaloosa News said that Mary Saban Pasko died at the age of 92.
Mary, born in Michigan on July 29, 1932, moved to Farmington, West Virginia, where she met Nick Saban Sr. during their time at Farmington High School. Together, the Sabans had two children, Dene and Nick Jr., who would later become the multi-national champion-winning University of Alabama football coach. The family also operated Saban Gulf Service Station, a restaurant, and a Dairy King.
Nick Sr. introduced Pop Warner football to the community, and Mary was a dedicated supporter. She decorated the team bus, worked at concessions, and seldom missed a game, as noted in her obituary.
Throughout her career, Mary worked at CB&T Bank and the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Department. Nick Sr. passed away in 1973, and later in life, Mary married Bobby Pasko after they reconnected at a high school reunion. After Bobby’s death, Mary relocated to Birmingham.
She is survived by her two children, Nick (Terry) Saban and Dene (Leroy) Thompson, six grandchildren and four great grandchildren, as well as two sisters.
Nick Saban has not formally endorsed either Donald Trump or Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential election, but his political leanings have been fairly evident over the years.
Earlier this year, college football analyst Alex Kirshner speculated that Saban might run for a Senate seat in Alabama as a Democrat, suggesting that Saban’s support for various liberal policies indicates he leans “at least a little bit” toward the Democratic side.
“Saban said last year that college football players should be unionized and explained to an interviewer, ‘General Motors and the automotive industries had unions for a long time and they survived fairly well.’ Saban is a registered voter in Alabama, but the secretary of state’s office doesn’t list a party affiliation. Saban’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, did not reply to emailed questions about whether Saban would have any interest in running or under which party affiliation.”
Earlier this year, Slate published a piece attempting to persuade Saban to run as a Democrat against another famous Alabama football coach and current U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican.
“Nick Saban has no apparent reason to run for political office and several reasons not to. But in the next few years, Democrats in Alabama will have no choice but to put relentless pressure on the recently retired University of Alabama football coach to do so. Maybe, they’ll need to hope, he will get bored enough in retirement to consider it, or maybe he can be browbeaten into feeling the insatiable itch of public service,” the February piece noted.
“Over two weeks in late January, pollsters from the market research firm YouGov surveyed 532 registered voters in Alabama and found Saban narrowly leading Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, himself a former college football coach at Auburn, in a hypothetical matchup for Senate in 2026,” the piece claimed.
Alabama is a solid red state but Democrat Doug Jones won a special election in 2017 to replace Jeff Sessions, who stepped down to become then-President Donald Trump’s attorney general.
