Mother of College Football Legend Nick Saban Passes Away
The mother of legendary football coach Nick Saban has passed away, as reported by a local Alabama newspaper.
An obituary in the Tuscaloosa News revealed that Mary Saban Pasko died at the age of 92.
Mary was born in Michigan on July 29, 1932, but later moved to Farmington, West Virginia, where she met Nick Saban Sr. during their time at Farmington High School. Together, they had two children, Dene and Nick Jr., who would go on to become the multi-national championship-winning coach at the University of Alabama. The Saban family also managed a Gulf Service Station, a restaurant, and a Dairy King.
Nick Sr. introduced Pop Warner football to the community, and Mary was a devoted supporter, often decorating the team bus, working at concessions, and rarely missing a game, as highlighted in her obituary.
Throughout her life, Mary worked at CB&T Bank and the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Department. After Nick Sr.'s passing in 1973, Mary later remarried Bobby Pasko, a high school acquaintance. Following Bobby’s death, she relocated to Birmingham.
Mary is survived by her two children, Nick (Terry) Saban and Dene (Leroy) Thompson, along with six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and two sisters.
Nick Saban has not formally endorsed either Donald Trump or Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential election, but his political views have been somewhat evident over the years.
Earlier this year, college football analyst Alex Kirshner speculated that Saban might consider running for a Senate seat in Alabama as a Democrat, citing Saban’s support for various liberal policies as an indication that he leans “at least a little bit” toward the Democratic side.
“Saban has shown over the years that he cares about professional politics and may lean slightly toward the Democratic side. The former coach, a native of West Virginia, is a longtime friend of retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and endorsed him in his 2018 reelection campaign. In 2022, Saban signed a letter urging Manchin to support voting rights protections, though Saban later clarified that he did not support bypassing the filibuster,” Kirshner wrote for Slate earlier this year.
“Saban mentioned last year that college football players should be unionized, explaining that ‘General Motors and the automotive industries have had unions for a long time, and they’ve survived fairly well.’ Although Saban is a registered voter in Alabama, the state’s secretary of state’s office doesn’t list a party affiliation. Saban’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, did not respond to inquiries about whether Saban would consider running for office or which party he might align with.”
Earlier this year, Slate published an article encouraging Saban to consider running as a Democrat against current U.S. Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, a Republican.
“Nick Saban has no apparent reason to run for political office and several reasons not to. But in the coming years, Democrats in Alabama may feel compelled to pressure the recently retired University of Alabama football coach to do so. Perhaps they’ll hope he becomes bored in retirement and considers it, or that he might feel a calling to public service,” the February article suggested.
“Pollsters from the market research firm YouGov surveyed 532 registered voters in Alabama over two weeks in late January and found Saban narrowly leading Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, himself a former college football coach at Auburn, in a hypothetical Senate matchup for 2026,” the article claimed.
Although Alabama is a solidly Republican state, Democrat Doug Jones won a special election in 2017 to replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned to become then-President Donald Trump’s attorney general.