Retired University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban has some hilarious stories.

He unleashed one on Thursday morning when he was the headline speaker at the Irondale Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast at the Church of the Highlands.

“This has been very inspirational today, but I must admit to you that it’s not always been that way,” Saban said. “If you remember back the first year we were at Alabama, we lost to ULM.”

Saban had just taken a seat onstage with Irondale Mayor James W. Stewart after a series of clergy had offered prayers, and he began with an anecdote.

“You may not even know what that stands for – University of Louisiana-Monroe,” Saban said. “It was the most humiliating defeat, maybe of my entire coaching career.”

Alabama lost to Louisiana-Monroe 21-14 on Nov. 17, 2007 at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa in front of 92,138 fans.

“I think we had five guys suspended by the NCAA,” Saban said. “We had three more suspended for disciplinary reasons. We played horrible in the game. I was almost ashamed of how we represented the university and the program. We fumbled the ball six times. So, we ended up getting beat in the game. Everybody’s disappointed. Fans are disappointed.

“Coaches are disappointed. Players are disappointed. But when you’re the coach, you have to win the locker room after the game and try to inspire the guys when they didn’t perform very well. Then you have to go to the press conference and explain why you played so poorly. Then you have to go to the recruiting room and tell recruits that it’s not really going to be this way in the future.

“So, then, after all that, after all that humiliation, I get in my car to drive home, and I don’t have any gas in the car. So, now I’ve got to stop at a self-serve, put some gas in the car, and I used to wear my LSU National Championship ring.

“So, I go to pay the guy, and the guy says, ‘Wow, what’s that ring?’ And I say, that’s a National Championship ring. And we’re going to do the same thing here at Alabama.

“And the guy looks at me and says, ‘We’ll never do it as long as that Nick Saban is coach.’”