Thank You, Coach Saban

Life-lessons from the now-retired GOAT could help save the country.

Coach Saban and his secret weapon, “Miss Terry,” used The Process to create a new standard of excellence in college football.

As big an Alabama fan as I am, I had to write a column thanking Nick Saban for all he did to give me so many happy moments in my life.

As I recognize many readers don’t give a hoot about Alabama football or Coach Saban, I’ll try to identify some “lessons-from-Nick-Saban” I think might benefit every American.

Point 1 - Nick Saban did it his way

And Coach Saban’s way was what all Alabama fans know is something called “The Process.” 

In a nutshell, The Process means one should focus only on the things that matter and what we can control today, right now. Don’t worry about the outcome of football games in the future - those will take care of themselves (probably in a good way) if you just work The Process.

Take-away: A key “life lesson” might be that it doesn’t matter if others might not be as sold on your process as you are. If you think this process produces great results, do it. Which Saban did. The proof of The Process is in the pudding (the record books).

Point 2 - Saban preached consistency as the 

greatest benchmark of successful people

As a good Alabama fan, I paid rapt attention to Coach Saban’s coaching points and noted he’s always harping on “consistency.” That is, The Process doesn’t work unless you apply it consistently every day. 

Coach Saban also considers consistent positive results the greatest measure of success. 

By his own “standard” (another Saban buzzword), no college football coach produced excellent football seasons more consistently than Saban.

The reason Coach Saban’s now considered the greatest college football coach of all-time (The GOAT) is that his Alabama teams were almost ALWAYS in the running to win a national title late into every season … for 16 years in a row.

Saban’s Alabama teams won six national championships (he won another at LSU). What’s really impressive, though, is the number of seasons Alabama could have won more national championships.

If we throw out Saban’s first year in Tuscaloosa (2007), Alabama was in the national title hunt 15 out of 16 seasons heading into the final games of the season.

Until this season, at some point in the season, Alabama was ranked No. 1 in the football polls for 15 consecutive years, a record that may never be broken.

I compare this run of being “in the hunt” to the golf excellence of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods in their primes. Nicklaus and Tiger might not have won every major, but they always seemed to be in contention heading into the back nine on Sunday.

Nicklaus won an amazing 18 majors (not counting two U.S. Amateur titles). Perhaps just as impressive, he finished as runner-up 19 times. That’s “consistency” … but Saban’s teams were in the hunt more often - like, pretty much, every year, including the recently-concluded season.

Point 3 - Saban’s critics have egg on their keyboards

I always love it when the sanctimonious pundit class is proven to be spectacularly wrong. Coach Saban’s career provided me this gift as well.

I still remember all the pundits who eviscerated Saban for “bailing” on the Miami Dolphins when he decided he could be much more successful - and happy - if he was, once again, a college coach.

Many of these critics confidently predicted Saban would bail on Alabama too. (All he did was stay at Alabama for 17 years.)

I also remember the commonly-accepted narrative that no coach could win at Alabama, which, according to conventional wisdom, had become a train-wreck of a program in the years after Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s own dynasty run. (This was a false narrative too. Yes, Alabama was not as consistently successful as it had been, but the program wasn’t dead yet).

Saban, who is much smarter than his critics, ignored the advice to stay away from Alabama as he must have known any good coach could leverage Alabama’s rich football tradition and passionate fan support into tremendous and “consistent” success.

Life-lesson: Ignore the critics and pundits, who are often obtuse.

Point 4 - Destiny, fate, luck or karma are funny … but matter

I still think about what a flukey set of circumstances led to Nick Saban becoming Alabama’s football coach in 2007.

Before Saban was hired, Alabama athletic director Mal Moore had actually offered the job to then West Virginia Coach Rich Rodriguez, who according to media reports, accepted the offer.

If media reports are true, Rodriguez then decided to remain at West Virginia, allegedly because his wife didn’t want him to go to Alabama (because the program was a train wreck and dysfunctional and her husband might get criticized by mean pundits like Paul Finebaum).

As we now know, Rodriguez ended up leaving West Virginia to become coach at Michigan, where he was soon fired. He then went to Arizona, where he was again terminated. Coach Rodriguez actually ended up in Alabama and is coaching at Jacksonville State, where I wish him well. Still, I’ve always meant to send a bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Rodriguez.

(Mal Moore, reportedly, also offered the UA job to Mike Riley, whose wife, reportedly, also said “Don’t take it!”)

Strange events like this can change an entire state and college football …

I read the late Mal Moore’s memoirs where he gave readers the real reason he never gave up trying to get Nick Saban to come to Alabama. According to Moore (a former Alabama teammate and friend of my late father’s), it was Moore’s nephew who changed Alabama football history.

Moore’s nephew is a carpenter and contractor who, as fate would have it, was hired by Coach Saban to do some work at Saban’s lake house in Georgia.

The contractor introduced himself as the nephew of Alabama athletic director Mal Moore. Coach Saban then told his employee that his uncle should keep him in mind if the Alabama head coaching job ever came open.

After Coaches Rodriguez and Riley rejected Alabama job offers, Coach Moore came back to his Ace of Spades. I’ve always thought how millions of lives would have been changed if Coach Saban had hired another contractor to do that work at his lake house.

Point 5 - Behind every great man is a great woman

Alabama fans probably love Coach Saban’s wife (“Miss Terry”) as much as they love Coach Saban.

Like many great leaders, Coach Saban can be stubborn and even he isn’t always right. But the one person he seems to listen to is his wife of more than 50 years. 

If media reports are correct, it was Miss Terry who convinced her husband to take the Alabama job and get back into college football. She then probably influenced him to stay in Tuscaloosa, even though every school and NFL team was trying to lure him away.

Thank you, Mrs. Saban. We love you.

Point 6 - Saban understood and excelled at the “most important thing”

I could actually argue that Coach Bryant might have been a better “coach” than Nick Saban. My argument would be that Coach Bryant could take average talent (compared to the blue-chippers that made up Saban’s Alabama rosters) and consistently win big with that talent.

But even Coach Bryant didn’t have Alabama in the running for a national title 15 or 16 years in a row.

Besides The Process, the key to Saban’s amazing success was his amazing ability as a recruiter. It turns out that “Jimmy’s and Joes” are more important than the “X’s and O’s” when it comes to - consistently - winning football games.

Saban knew that 90-percent of the battle in college football is recruiting great players - and he never stopped recruiting and always hired assistants who were excellent and tireless recruiters. 

Life-lesson: If you want to excel in your profession, focus on the most important thing.

In summary …

As a passionate Alabama football fan, I always thought I was very lucky to live through the second decade of Coach Bryant’s great run as Alabama coach. I never thought another Alabama coach could be hired who would be even more successful over an extended period of time.

Point 7 - Tradition matters

But I should have known this was possible. It’s actually a rich tradition which establishes expectations and explains the great interest and enthusiasm - the “standard” - that makes great success possible in many organizations.

That is, Coach Saban’s amazing results were, in large part, made possible by the tradition that Bryant had established at Alabama. In fact, Alabama’s rich football tradition dates to the early 1920s and to coaches before Bryant like Wallace Wade and Frank Thomas.

When I think of America today, I still think our country has a tradition of producing outstanding leaders and citizens. That is, until recently, our culture - or standard of excellence - was the key to our nation excelling in so many areas.

It will be interesting to observe if this culture and tradition is embedded into our DNA enough to allow America - just like Alabama football under Nick Saban - to return to its greatest days.

Final point -Leadership matters

I would like to publicly thank Coach Nick Saban for providing the leadership that made “my” football team one of the most-respected in college football history. 

While numerous national trends disturb me, in the last 17 years, the consistent excellence of Alabama football brightened my life and showed me that exceptional results are possible if we follow the right process.