We’ve all seen those doppelgangers out there — two people who look exactly the same, but are two completely separate individuals. One that some of you are probably familiar with is the Grammy-winning guitar player from a popular 1980s jazz band that looks exactly like Nick Saban. Wayne Johnson from The Manhattan Transfer band has been getting Saban comparisons on the internet for quite some time. The video below is where the comparison got started — during Wayne’s appearance at a John Tesh concert in the mid-1990s.
Nick Saban’s lookalike guitarist is ‘proud’ to look like the Bama head coach
The two are uncanny.
John Tesh YouTube and Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
AL.com recently interviewed Johnson, and he says he’s not too opposed to being compared to one of college football’s greatest head coaches. But when the comparison first came about in the early 2000s, he hadn’t heard he looked like him before.
Johnson first became aware of the weird phenomenon when someone reached out to him and asked for permission to use the video. Before he watched the video, he never noticed any resemblance to the man who could go down as the greatest college football coach ever. He had been compared to celebrities before--the late Alan Thicke is the one he got most often--but never Saban.
“I was proud of it when I saw that,” he says. “I thought this is so cool. Nick Saban, in the college football world, is like a god.”
Johnson was the winner of a Grammy in 2004 for best pop instrumental album of the year. Nowadays, he travels as a Taylor guitar instructor. Even though he’s gotten older since the performance with Tesh that set off the Saban comparison, he still shares a resemblance to Alabama’s head coach.
Thank you, guitar-shredding Saban doppelganger, for your service to the college football internet.
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