Nick Saban, Bob Stoops' Uncle Didn't Notice Bar Robbery While They Talked Football

We all know Nick Saban loves football.

How much does the Alabama Crimson Tide head coach love the sport? Well, enough to be so focused talking about the game that he missed a robbery happening right in front of him.

Saban and the uncle of former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, whose name is also Bob Stoops, recently spoke about a time in the late 1980s they were in an Ohio bar together and were completely oblivious to their dangerous surroundings.

Stoops set the scene for Barry Tramel of The Oklahoman:

"“We were in this bar,” Uncle Bob said. “Just talking football. We were moving salt shakers, anything we could grab, talking football. "

"“I remember vividly, there was a guy across from us, it was a snakelike bar, and the guy gets this glass, he smashes it on the ground. "

"“I happened to be looking over that way, all of a sudden, I see him smash that, and he was really mad. "

"“I said, ‘Hey, buddy, is something wrong?’ "

"“He said, ‘Hey, you (expletive), we just got robbed!’ "

"“I’m like, ‘You’re blanking me.’ "

"“He goes, ‘No, they had a shotgun pointed right at you two blank-holes.’” "

The story is a Saban favorite, as the Alabama coach has shared it on several occasions in the past—most recently last week.

“There’s not a lot of details,” Saban said on The Last Round (around the 3:07:00 mark). “We were talking football, and the guy came in and robbed the place with a shotgun. Police came about 20 minutes later and the bartender just told the police, ‘Don’t ask these two guys. They didn’t even know what happened.’ That was it.

“I guess you could say we were focused."

While it's hard to imagine anyone being able to ignore a whole robbery happening before their eyes, that level of singular focus has made Saban arguably the greatest college football coach in history.