Sabans to Sponsor One Last Habitat House in Tuscaloosa to Honor SEC Championship
Nick and Terry Saban aren't done leaving their marks in Tuscaloosa, even after the legendary Alabama football coach stunned the sports world Wednesday when he announced his retirement.
Hours after the news broke, Habitat for Humanity of Tuscaloosa confirmed the Saban's Nick's Kids Foundation will sponsor the construction of another house for a family in need to commemorate the Tide's final SEC Championship win with Saban last month.
For anyone unfamiliar with this facet of Saban's legacy, in 2012 early, the city of Tuscaloosa was nearly unrecognizable, still in the earliest days of recovering from an EF-4 tornado that devastated the state in April 2011.
Coming off his third national championship in four years at Alabama, and Saban and Mrs. Terry announced that their Nick's Kids Foundation would fund and help build a new house for every time the Crimson Tide had won it all since 1925.
At the time, that "only" meant funding the construction of 16 Habitat houses in Alberta and West Tuscaloosa. With additional Championship wins in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 seasons, the Foundation funded three more, and the players on the winning teams would dedicate some time to working on the houses as they were being built.
Then, when Alabama beat Georgia in the 2021 SEC Championship but lost to the Bulldogs in the CFP final in January 2022, Mrs. Terry said she and Nick agreed - an SEC Title was enough to warrant funding another Habitat house.
Now, even as Nick Saban leaves the football program and steps into retirement, the king and queen of the Crimson Tide have announced they will sponsor one more house - the LANK House - to celebrate the 2023 season and another SEC title win over UGA.
"The Chambers family, whose son is pictured here, will have a new home due to their generosity," Habitat Executive Director Ellen Potts wrote on Facebook. "TWENTY-ONE Habitat families' lives have been changed. The generational impact of the blessing the Sabans have been just to Habitat families is staggering, but their steadfast support also extends to every non-profit that serves children in our community and beyond."
Mrs. Terry also assured the community that the work of the philanthropic Nick's Kids Foundation will continue even in the wake of her husband's retirement, and that their Saban Center STEM hub planned for downtown Tuscaloosa will still be a game-changer for educators in Alabama.
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