“What have you done now?”

That’s what the voice on the other end of the phone said. I opened with a simple “Hello,” and he responded with the kind of abrupt inquiry that’ll get your attention in a hurry.

I knew the person behind the voice, but I had no idea what he was talking about and told him so. In a tone more amused than angry, he replied that he’d just received a call from a mutual acquaintance, a certain football coach, who was none too happy with me.

That coach was Nick Saban. Seems he had just dialed up the person on the other end of the line and complained, “Your boy is killing me.”

Who, me? As if.

We weren’t buddies, and we weren’t pals, but Saban and I go way back, all the way back to Nov. 22, 2006 as far as Alabama football is concerned. The headline above my column in The Birmingham News that morning, four days before the program fired Mike Shula, read, “Bama makes inquiry about Nick Saban.”