It is well known that Nick Saban doesn’t like to make comparison questions.

Eli Gold found out the hard way.

Making his weekly appearance on the Beat Everyone podcast, the former Voice of the Crimson Tide shared when Saban, the retired Alabama coach, told him he asked a “stupid” question.

Gold was asking Saban, who was in his first year, about then-Alabama running back Eddie Lacy, but he asked the coach to compare him to other running backs Saban has coached.

“Well, he stared at me, and I didn’t know what I had done because he had never made it clear that he didn’t want to compare,” Gold said. “He stared at me, and folks, when I mean he stared at me, I felt like somebody had come up behind me with a hypodermic needle filled with ice water, shoved it into my spine.

“I mean I just felt myself going cold from head to toe.”

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They finished recording the show. Typically, Gold said, Saban would just get up and leave but not this time.

“He never got up to leave,” Gold said. “And I said to myself, ‘Uh-Oh.’ I thought maybe I can start reading ‘War and Peace’ or something, and we finally finished and then he goes, ‘Now, that was a stupid question.’”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.