'As an audiotape spread on the Internet, Alabama coach Nick Saban acknowledged Wednesday using a phrase considered derogatory to Cajuns but said he doesn't condone such language and merely was repeating something a friend told him.

Saban, a former LSU and Miami Dolphins coach, used an ethnic slur Jan. 3 while telling Florida reporters in Tuscaloosa an anecdote about an LSU fan's angry reaction to his hiring.

When asked about the LSU fans' reaction, Saban related a phone call from a friend on the LSU board of trustees, whom he did not name. In what seemed to be an attempt at humor, Saban told of the friend's encounter with an LSU fan, who speaks in a Cajun dialect.

"He was walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl," Saban said on the taped comments. "He calls me. There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coonass guys that talk funny."'