INDIANAPOLIS — Call it the leather jacket that launched a thousand memes.
Nick Saban’s travel attire created quite the stir when the Alabama Crimson Tide landed in Indianapolis on Friday night for Monday’s College Football Championship matchup against the Georgia Bulldogs.
The Alabama head coach stepped off the plane donning a tan leather bomber jacket to brace against the bitter Indiana cold, and a fashion legend was born. It didn’t hurt that the well-worn jacket is at least 10 years older than most of his players.
According to AL.com, Saban is no stranger to cold weather, having grown up in West Virginia and spent most of his coaching career above the Mason-Dixon line before being lured to LSU in 2000.
That jacket, though, elicited delight from players and fans alike.
“Coach’s jacket was fly. Coach is always going to step into something we haven’t seen before as a team. So that’s to be expected,” Alabama quarterback Bryce Young told AL.com.
According to the Tuscaloosa News, the coach even dedicated a portion of his radio show, aired live from downtown Indianapolis on Saturday night, to the wardrobe staple that has since become Twitter-famous.
“That jacket, whatever you want to call it, was in style, has been out of style, and is back in style,” Saban said of the jacket he has owned since the 1990s during the broadcast.
Meanwhile, his daughter, Kristen Saban Setas, also posted about the jacket on Instagram earlier in the day, confirming that the jacket is far from new.
“It’s a classic,” she wrote. “Leather never goes out of style.”
According to AL.com, the Tide and Bulldogs will play for the national title inside climate-controlled Lucas Oil Stadium, but the outdoor temperature for the 8 p.m. ET kickoff will be in the teens before falling to as low as single digits Tuesday morning.
By contrast, the average high and low temperatures in the Tide’s hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, are 56 and 35, respectively.
Of course, social media did not disappoint on this one: