Nick Saban wasn’t always a fan of playing home games.

The former Alabama coach explained Friday that home games often came with a number of challenges he didn’t have to worry about when the Tide was on the road.

“I was even saying on the way over here how much easier it was to play on the road from my coaching-load standpoint,” Saban said during his weekly appearance Friday on “The Pat McAfee Show.”.

“If you had 300 recruits in there, who talked to those guys while they were there? The coaches had to talk to them, the head coach had to talk to them. I mean, so you’re spending so much time on Friday and Saturday recruiting that it takes away from your focus on the game. Then you’re asking a player, ‘Hey, man, why don’t come over and say hi to this recruit?’ Instead of him focusing on the game, he’s worried about recruiting. When you play on the road, you don’t have any of that.

“Plus I used to have to go to ‘Nick at Noon’ and speak to everybody when we had a home game. I hated that. I mean, I hated it. To spend 12 to 1 on Friday before a big game and you’re speaking to these alums.”

‌’Nick at Noon’ was a Friday even to benefit Yea Alabama, the program’s NIL collective.

“I enjoyed doing it, don’t get me wrong,” Saban, making air quotes with his fingers, told McAfee. “But it took away from — and then you leave that, and you’ve got to go talk to some recruits. I used to have trouble getting dressed in time to go out for warm-ups when we had big home games because I had so many recruits to talk to in my office, in the stadium, in the locker room — I was hustling to get dressed to be on time for warm-ups.

“So it can be a distraction, but if you’re gonna have a good team, you’ve got to do a good job of recruiting.”

Saban, who won seven national championships, had a coaching record 206-29 while at Alabama.

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.