Paul Finebaum called it one of the “most unbelievable college football stories of our time.”

A year ago today, Alabama coach Nick Saban sent shockwaves through college football when he said Texas A&M bought every player.

What followed was weeks of national buzz rarely seen in the college football world. Two heavyweight coaching titans calling each other out, and rabid fan bases couldn’t get enough of it.

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Twelve months later, Finebaum proclaimed it was the “single moment that turned everything around” for the Crimson Tide in terms of NIL and collectives, and “Jimbo lost badly.”

“Saban may have made a mistake initially by opening up the door, but Jimbo simply made a mess out of it the next day when he held the news conference,” Finebaum told me Thursday during his weekly appearance on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 in Mobile. “Nothing was gained from that. If you are going after Nick Saban, take him down.”

Saban said, “(Texas) A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. Aight?”

Fisher responded the next day with a 10-minute rant about Saban.

“There’s always that line from mythology, ‘If you are going to go after the king, you have to kill him,’” Finebaum said. “He didn’t. He beat him on the football field the year before but all he did was give Saban some momentum by saying all these nasty things about him without any justification.”

In the end, it didn’t really matter.

“Saban had a huge recruiting class, didn’t have a great season on the field,” Finebaum added. “Jimbo’s season was short of a disaster. Now, he is trying to bounce back.”

Listen to the whole interview here.

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 Music App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.