Nate Oats has established a bit more pull in his five seasons in charge of Alabama basketball. Since taking over the Crimson Tide in 2019, the head coach has led his team to a 117-54 record and four NCAA Tournament appearances, including a first-ever Final Four run this past spring.

In March, Oats signed a new contract extension that now places him among the top five highest-paid coaches in college basketball. His program is also getting an expanded practice facility that will cost a total of $58,674,625.

At the moment, if Oats wants something, Alabama is going to do whatever it can to make it happen. However, that wasn’t always the case.

During an interview with former Alabama basketball coach Mark Gottfried, Oats shared a funny story about what life was like before he established himself with the Tide in his first few weeks in Tuscaloosa.

Oats’ best example is a conversation he had with Nick Saban.

Oats told Gottfried that a few months after taking the Alabama job in March of 2019, he shadowed Saban, following him to practice and meetings. A locked-in Saban didn’t even acknowledge Oats until late in the day when he turned to him and asked “Do you have anything for me?”

While Oats wasn’t about to rattle off any football-related suggestions, he did ask Saban how he managed to deal with an onslaught of speaking engagements while managing his team. Saban, who is known to be stingy with his time, provided a somewhat privileged response.

“When they hired me, I told them they had nine days, that’s it. Pick carefully,” Saban said, according to Oats. “I’m going to do nine events, that’s it. That’s all you get.”

That sounded great to Oats, who originally planned to brazenly walk into Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne’s office the next day with a similar request. However, that confidence wore off a bit after the first-year head coach thought over the potential conversation in his head.

“I slept on it and I woke up the next morning, and I was like ‘You know what I don’t have seven national championships to my name or whatever [Saban] had at that point. I don’t have this. They’re paying me a lot of money,’” Oats recalled. “I figured out why I have to speak because they either want the football coach or the basketball coach, and they ain’t getting the football coach. So guess who’s got to speak?”

As for the conversation with Byrne? It never happened.

These days, Oats doesn’t have to worry about taking on the brunt of speaking obligations. First-year head football coach Kalen DeBoer is much more generous with his time than Saban and has already made himself available for several appearances during his first five months on the job.

Perhaps that and Oats’ elevated standing in the coaching world will lead him to revisit the potential meeting with his athletic director.

“Now that I made a Final Four,” Oats said with a smile, “maybe I can tell him he’s got nine days.”