From his spot three seats down, all Nick Saban could do was shrug.
Olivia “Livvy” Dunne, the LSU gymnast who was the “College GameDay” guest picker alongside boyfriend and star Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes for its Baton Rouge edition Saturday, fired off a jab toward the former LSU and Alabama head coach during her pick for the Vanderbilt-South Carolina game.
“Someone once said that Vanderbilt was the easiest place to play in the SEC,” Dunne said. “But not today. I’m going with Vanderbilt.”
Earlier this year, during an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show,” that’s essentially what Saban said, describing the Commodores’ home environment as the one in the entire conference that’s “not hard to play.”
“When you play at Vanderbilt, you have more fans there than they have,” Saban said during the segment, “and that’s no disrespect to them. It’s the truth.”
But after Vanderbilt shocked then-No. 1 Alabama, 40-35, this season at FirstBank Stadium, they played that clip on the scoreboard.
Just over a month later, Dunne made sure to remind Saban of his comment that backfired before No. 24 Vanderbilt hosted the Gamecocks on Saturday.
Dunne and Skenes — who won national championships at LSU in gymnastics and baseball respectively – joined the ESPN show as co-guest pickers, with Dunne the first active college athlete to make selections on the show since NBA star Marcus Smart picked while at Oklahoma State in 2013, according to ESPN.
She, predictably, chose the Tigers to defeat the Crimson Tide in a matchup between the country’s Nos. 15 and 11 teams, respectively.
“I mean, a night game in Death Valley?” Dunne said. “There’s only one right answer, and it’s LSU.”
Dunne, who announced in July that she’d return to LSU for a fifth season, sits No. 2 on On3.com’s NIL rankings with a valuation of $4 million, only trailing Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders and his $6.2 million valuation.
Skenes went 11-3 in 23 starts during his rookie season with Pittsburgh, collecting a 1.96 ERA, earning the National League’s start in the All-Star Game and relying on a powerful fastball to carve through opposing lineups.
