This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #689 - Nick Saban

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00:00:30.000 He's probably the greatest college football coach of all time, and I know he didn't like

00:00:35.880 hearing me say probably right there.

00:00:37.820 His run at the University of Alabama will never be matched, I would guess.

00:00:42.740 He's had seven national championships.

00:00:45.460 What he's done is unprecedented, and he has a new documentary out this week on ESPN.

00:00:50.920 It's called Saban.

00:00:52.720 I suggest that you enjoy that.

00:00:54.640 I am grateful for his time.

00:00:58.160 Truly, it was an honor.

00:01:00.000 Today's guest is Nick Saban.

00:01:19.180 Yeah, that's one of those days.

00:01:20.800 Sometimes I have those days where you're just like, how am I going to get it all done?

00:01:23.360 You ever have days like that?

00:01:24.700 Oh, yeah.

00:01:25.740 Today's one of them.

00:01:26.800 Has it been?

00:01:28.060 And did you have to regroup a little?

00:01:29.600 Or, like, what do you do, like, in a moment like that?

00:01:31.520 Because I'm sure you've had them, like, at, like, kind of intense levels.

00:01:34.920 And then it's at, like, regular day-to-day levels.

00:01:37.000 Sometimes I'm just like, there's not a breath deep enough I can take sometimes, it feels like.

00:01:42.000 But, you know, I'm so used to grinding through it, coaching 14 hours a day, one problem after the next, one solution after the next.

00:01:50.960 I can usually sort of grind through it.

00:01:53.560 What I don't do very well at is having nothing to do.

00:01:56.460 you know, that, that, that after being so busy for so long, I mean, now when I don't have anything

00:02:02.860 to do, I'm like, like my wife, she didn't, she, she, you playing golf today? She's like,

00:02:10.780 we're going to build a course in the backyard. If we have to church on Sunday morning. And then

00:02:14.660 she says, well, you're going to play golf afterwards, right? I don't want to see you

00:02:19.380 until two 30. Yes. I guess it's kind of new for her that now you're home, right? That's right.

00:02:24.080 I came home one day at 3 o'clock.

00:02:25.880 She said, what are you doing here?

00:02:29.180 Where did you meet Miss Terry at?

00:02:33.060 Seventh grade science camp.

00:02:35.020 We went to different schools in West Virginia.

00:02:37.160 She went kind of the city school, and I went to the country school.

00:02:42.580 But we met at science camp.

00:02:45.080 Now, we lived about 10 miles apart, but that's like worlds apart back in those days.

00:02:50.740 Oh, yeah.

00:02:51.200 Yeah, but so we always liked each other.

00:02:53.560 but I could never see her. And it wasn't until I was a senior, she was a junior that we started

00:02:59.340 dating. So, um, so it would be 55 years in December. We've been married. And how did

00:03:07.500 congratulations? It's been fun. That's cool. No, it's great to hear that. Um, how did you propose

00:03:13.380 to her? Uh, I think over the phone, if I remember right. What like a recruiting call? No, I mean,

00:03:21.680 i was at kent state she was back home going to fairmont state and we talked on the phone but

00:03:27.140 you know in those days i mean you know it was expensive you know to talk on the phone so we'd

00:03:32.900 have these short conversations maybe once a week or whatever and um she came to visit during the

00:03:40.180 season when i was playing and kind of talked about it then but did she ever make you get down

00:03:46.620 like did she ever make you go through kind of the formal no not really wow and then we had our

00:03:52.080 honeymoon in wheeling at the wheeling holiday inn uh did you really oh yeah and went to big boy

00:03:58.760 you know with the strawberry pie yeah that was great that was where your honeymoon was that was

00:04:05.320 it oh that's pretty cool i will tell you this i had a show in pittsburgh one time and i had a

00:04:09.960 couple ladies offer me the wheeling feeling after the show i didn't get any of it but

00:04:15.160 Yeah, that's not one of the most accommodating places to visit.

00:04:22.800 Yeah, yeah, I've had some good times.

00:04:24.940 I did a show at the Big Sandy there in Huntington, which was really cool.

00:04:27.940 I did a show one weekend when the guy read, remember they made that movie about the plane that crashed for Marshall?

00:04:36.140 Oh, yeah.

00:04:36.520 You know, it was just that horrific tragedy that happened there within that community.

00:04:39.840 And the guy who didn't take the plane, the coach's name was Red something.

00:04:45.460 He was speaking at the hotel that I was staying at that day.

00:04:48.700 I remember that story.

00:04:50.340 Well, you know, ironically, I was playing at Kent State at the time,

00:04:53.780 and we played them at Marshall several weeks before that actually happened.

00:05:00.300 Really?

00:05:00.800 It was really interesting.

00:05:01.680 And they had a pretty good team.

00:05:04.760 Yeah, it was a tragedy.

00:05:06.840 So that was the same season that you were playing,

00:05:08.860 one of their the team just was gone they're gone wow crazy

00:05:15.180 that's pretty devastating there it is right there william offered red dawson was the marshal

00:05:19.020 assistant coach who did not red dawson uh pass away in the 1970 plane crash because he was away

00:05:23.100 on a recruiting trip and drove back instead of flying that's right um yeah i've never i haven't

00:05:28.940 spent a ton of time up there but it's always nice when i when i do um did you guys take a lot of

00:05:33.420 lot of family vacations and stuff when you whenever you're growing up up there no not really i mean

00:05:39.660 it was work work work you know my dad had a service station never wanted to leave and

00:05:46.040 i worked in it from the time i was 11 years old so um we never did i'll terry and i always tried

00:05:55.400 to do that you know once we got established and you know myrtle beach was the spot it was like

00:06:01.180 going to the French Riviera when you're from West Virginia.

00:06:04.080 So we went there quite a few times, driving down eight hours.

00:06:12.140 Oh, yeah.

00:06:12.580 There you go.

00:06:13.140 Look at you right there, Nick and Terry.

00:06:15.520 That's it, baby.

00:06:17.040 That's magic, baby.

00:06:19.720 Whenever you guys got married, did you have like a wedding song or anything like that?

00:06:23.020 Like, do you have like a...

00:06:24.480 Yeah, but I wish you wouldn't ask me those kind of things.

00:06:27.100 I'm supposed to know that I don't really remember.

00:06:30.080 Okay.

00:06:31.180 We'll edit in a good answer, okay?

00:06:34.980 Yeah, I won't say a word, man.

00:06:36.740 I'm quiet on the creek over here, man.

00:06:38.800 I got nothing for you.

00:06:41.120 Well, how about this then?

00:06:42.080 Is there a gift that she got you, like an anniversary gift over the years,

00:06:46.060 one that you really kind of prized that she gave you?

00:06:50.580 That comes to mind.

00:06:52.120 That comes to mind.

00:06:54.780 You know, we enjoy being together so much,

00:06:59.740 and like we're best friends she's always been so supportive and helpful and everything that we've

00:07:05.720 done that you know it seems like those kind of things are a little bit second nature um you know

00:07:12.900 she's always told me what i needed to hear not what i wanted to hear and has been very helpful

00:07:18.380 you know in my development i mean when i was uh in college i couldn't get up in front of a group

00:07:24.900 and speak and she was a speech english major debate team i've lost a few of those through

00:07:32.360 the years you know the arguments but um she really was helpful to helping me develop you know

00:07:38.860 confidence and um public appearances and that type of thing so um she's just been so supportive

00:07:47.180 was a great recruiter you know great relationships with people um so i don't remember very many gifts

00:07:55.580 you know most of the time i'm giving the gifts you know not getting them yeah i think dads are

00:08:02.360 just hard to shop for too so but i guess i'm hearing you say that she's just it's just kind

00:08:06.480 of the eternal gift of you guys's connection has always been uh the bigger value of anything that

00:08:11.020 you that you could just kind of get somewhere that's right yeah um is there a specific moment

00:08:16.380 that comes to mind that she uh that she was really there when you when it was like a space

00:08:22.200 where you couldn't figure something out oh yeah there's a lot of those you know i i think that

00:08:27.140 you know especially once you get to be a head coach who do you talk to you know your assistants

00:08:34.200 are kind of your second lieutenants working for you and when you have issues and problems yeah

00:08:38.860 they can input certain things but certain big decisions you sort of have to make on your own

00:08:44.420 Yeah. And so who do you have out there that you can go talk to? And, you know, that's one thing

00:08:49.600 that Miss Terry was always someone that I could talk to about an issue or a problem. And it's

00:08:55.260 interesting sometimes that the outside perspective is a little different than your perception of what

00:09:04.580 it might be. And that's very, very helpful. Because even though she's your wife, she's still,

00:09:08.660 she's not locked in it like you are. Right. Yeah. That's a good point. A head coaching,

00:09:13.080 it kind of seems kind of lonely. It is. It can be. It is. And I was fortunate through the years

00:09:18.860 to have, you know, he's in a documentary. Dr. Rosen was always someone that I could talk to

00:09:26.460 about, you know, psychological disposition and how to try to, you know, motivate certain types

00:09:32.740 of people and players. And he and Miss Terry were probably the two people that had the biggest

00:09:38.660 impact on me and the direction I was always trying to head in and how they reinforced it.

00:09:45.140 It seems like from an outsider's perspective that you've had like an amazing life, right?

00:09:51.280 Do you feel like you've lived up to your potential? Like, do you feel like that?

00:09:58.360 Well, you know, I sort of look at it a little different. I mean, is winning games, is that

00:10:03.600 really what your life's potential is or is it and it's not a judgment i'm just genuinely curious

00:10:09.260 no no i but but compassion for other people helping other people uh could we do more like

00:10:16.400 we have a nick's kids foundation could we be doing more to help other people have i helped

00:10:21.000 our family enough have i been a good parent you know when you talk about all those things

00:10:25.900 not how many games you won you always think that hell there's a lot of things i could have done

00:10:32.520 better. And, um, that's what I sort of constantly try to be a better person, set a better example

00:10:40.200 for people, be a better leader, help people create value for themselves, show people that

00:10:45.380 you care about them. I mean, all those things are really, really important to me because my goal as

00:10:51.120 a coach was always, how can I help these guys have a better chance to be more successful in life?

00:10:56.420 So it was a lot of personal development, importance of getting an education. How do you develop the

00:11:02.000 habits on the field to reach a full potential. So that's where, you know, I spent most of my time,

00:11:08.320 but now not coaching, I still look at other people and how can we impact the future. And,

00:11:14.680 you know, we're just like, we're building a Saban center, which is, uh, you know, um, uh,

00:11:21.260 you know, student center for young kids growing up. It's going to be our legacy,

00:11:25.100 you know, in Tuscaloosa. So, uh, how can we impact education and career development and

00:11:30.460 young people. So all those things, could you have done those better? I think I probably could have

00:11:36.960 and will continue to try to do it the rest of my life. Do you feel like you've been kind of

00:11:43.360 like a perfectionist? I know that's just a word that people throw around. Like, do you feel like

00:11:47.460 you're a perfectionist kind of? It's not a judgment of you. No, I do. Just curious about

00:11:52.800 because I want to explore that because there's not a lot of people you can explore kind of that

00:11:55.340 term with sometimes. Yeah. So that's why I'm asking. But I think that, you know, and this

00:11:59.600 is kind of in a documentary but um you know when i was a kid growing up having compassion for other

00:12:04.500 people was really important accountability was really important in other words if you had a job

00:12:09.960 to do and you didn't do it exactly right you're going to do it over again so you learn how to be

00:12:13.900 accountable but one thing that you know my parents always emphasized is it wasn't about winning or

00:12:20.200 beating the other guy it was about did you do it as well as you were capable of doing it so i mean

00:12:27.640 We won 30 games in a row when I was in high school or something like that

00:12:31.180 and won the state championship, and that was never good enough.

00:12:34.900 I asked my mom once, why is it never good enough?

00:12:37.600 She said, it's not about winning the game.

00:12:39.400 It's not about beating the other guy.

00:12:40.920 It's about did you do it as well as you're capable of doing it.

00:12:44.180 So that makes you kind of a perfectionist.

00:12:48.560 Right, because the competition is always you.

00:12:50.520 It's always you.

00:12:51.920 The other thing that that instilled in me was I never had what I call relief syndrome.

00:12:57.640 which is you know it's kind of human nature is if you do something of significance you think

00:13:03.280 you're supposed to be able to rest on your laurels yeah yeah you know and we kind of promote that in

00:13:07.700 society we promote it in business um even players you know they would would win a big game and i'd

00:13:13.420 say can we have monday off practice we get rewarded for winning this big game well i'm

00:13:19.740 thinking about how we're going to win the next game right and did we play well enough in that

00:13:23.900 game to win the next game and what do we need to improve on so i i never ever developed that

00:13:30.880 rest on your laurels because i was never allowed to and it goes back to that word that you're

00:13:37.580 talking about you can never be perfect but you're always trying to close the gap on perfect

00:13:43.580 and i think great competitors whether it's kobe bryant tiger woods you know michael jordan you

00:13:49.720 know those guys could always take the next challenge man i didn't know how much they won

00:13:53.820 or what they did and uh that's how i wanted our teams to be able to compete and i felt like i had

00:14:01.100 to set that example so if i'm satisfied and i'm thinking everything's good we don't have to focus

00:14:08.980 on attention to detail and prepare for this game the right way and you know there was actually two

00:14:14.640 times at Alabama we won 19 games in a row and we lost the 20th game and we didn't play very well

00:14:20.320 in either one of those games not to take anything away from who beat us but and it was all because

00:14:25.340 of complacency blatant disregard for doing what's right you're complacent and then you start

00:14:31.700 developing bad habits and it starts showing up in your performance so I spent a lifetime trying

00:14:36.840 to avoid that and never got it done not the way 119 in games in a row twice and couldn't keep it

00:14:46.400 going i mean some would describe that as keeping it going though you know so but i understand i

00:14:51.600 understand what you're saying do you think it's tough for you to feel success kind of i know it's

00:14:56.000 kind of a similar question but um i always have a tough time feeling the success i feel like a

00:15:00.780 like a perfectionist um or i feel like i am a lot of times like um i know this haircut doesn't really

00:15:06.720 say that, but what's under it does though. And I feel like that a lot of times. I just feel like

00:15:12.520 it's hard for me to have fun sometimes because perfection doesn't really allow a lot of space

00:15:16.920 for fun. There's just not a lot of room for it. Well, but I don't think I had a lot of fun

00:15:22.260 because the fun of it is winning. That's the fun. Getting ready and doing all the things it takes

00:15:29.240 to win is not that much fun. But to your point, when you think like you think and like I think,

00:15:35.780 and you are successful as you are because of the way you think incidentally success is not a

00:15:41.100 continuum it's momentary and if there's anything that you've done in the past that you think is

00:15:47.200 going to impact your the future you're infected with success you know I mean you want to be a

00:15:53.920 flash in the pan and say I can do something exceptional once but have no conception of

00:16:02.200 how to do it on a consistent basis so I always define consistency for our players consistency

00:16:08.740 success is consistency and performance and that's what I wanted our players to think you know a

00:16:17.060 great example of that is we won the first national championship at Alabama in 2009 we won the Rose

00:16:21.980 Bowl beat Texas everybody's excited everybody's celebrating we have this big celebration in the

00:16:27.340 stadium and I don't know how many people were there it's pretty full and I get up and I said

00:16:32.160 this is not the end this is the beginning and i was sending a message you know we created a new

00:16:40.300 horizon a new expectation right so we got to look ahead to what we have to do to continue to get

00:16:47.160 better it's like climbing a mountain you know once you climb the mountain successfully you become the

00:16:51.560 mountain so everybody's shooting at you how did you do it what do we need to do to change how are

00:16:55.820 we going to beat those guys well if you don't keep improving it's not going to happen i mean

00:17:00.540 they're going to get you they're going to get you so and that's hard to get people to understand

00:17:05.840 but you understand it and that's why you don't have so much fun i didn't have that much fun

00:17:11.620 for 50 years i didn't have that much fun i enjoyed winning i hated losing more than i liked winning

00:17:19.580 so i was always trying to avoid the setbacks yeah and looking forward to what i had to do

00:17:26.700 and have the foresight to know what we had to do to be successful in the future.

00:17:33.220 Yeah, it's interesting because, yeah, once you find success one way,

00:17:36.860 other people are going to gravitate towards it or you've already done it.

00:17:39.620 So you also need to set a new challenge for yourself.

00:17:41.980 But then what's interesting about you is to go inside of what you'd already done

00:17:46.020 and kind of look at the pieces of it and be like, what worked really well here?

00:17:50.180 What can still evolve and what can be different?

00:17:53.360 That's an intense level of scrutiny, I think.

00:17:56.700 Well, but to me, there's two parts to that.

00:17:59.980 First of all, we changed how we played football through the years.

00:18:04.820 We changed the way we played offense.

00:18:06.900 We used to run the ball and play good defense.

00:18:08.980 We won championships doing that.

00:18:10.860 Then we went to the spread.

00:18:12.060 We went to no huddle.

00:18:13.100 We went fast through RPOs and all that stuff,

00:18:16.300 which is what the rule changes.

00:18:18.020 That was what you needed to do.

00:18:20.380 Well, we didn't play as good on defense

00:18:21.820 because we played a lot more plays.

00:18:23.740 And the other team scored more points,

00:18:25.300 but we scored more points too.

00:18:26.700 so we technically changed how we played the game to take advantage of rule changes got it but we

00:18:34.620 never changed the culture of what it took to be successful the togetherness as a team positive

00:18:40.260 energy positive attitude accountability be responsible to do your job what do you have

00:18:46.440 to do to dominate the competition that never changed that never changed and um but football

00:18:52.900 the technical parts of it sometimes change was there uh like i'm trying to think about like having

00:18:59.780 fun like like you ever have you ever been on a water slide or anything like that oh yeah you have

00:19:04.060 oh i know how to do all that now i got thrown out of the water slides most of the time did we used

00:19:08.400 to go on senator mansion you know who was the u.s senator from west virginia oh senator mansion

00:19:13.880 yeah he's in your documentary yeah so yeah well we used to go on vacation we both went to myrtle

00:19:19.240 beach but we never ever made it to a summer without kick getting kicked out of the water slot

00:19:24.920 what were y'all doing on there you know doubles and oh yeah running over people oh yeah yeah

00:19:31.860 sometimes we get there early and just run down it like they had one kind of bus and was

00:19:35.180 it was a water slot but it was almost not gonna be like at any moment you know and uh it was just

00:19:41.840 like a tetanus shot like it was kind of a safety hazard i think but um but we would get there early

00:19:47.200 and run down it right before they started the water,

00:19:49.100 and that was always a good time.

00:19:50.520 And I was just curious if you're able to also have, like,

00:19:52.720 other types of fun outside of football and what that's like for you.

00:19:56.900 I think that's the one thing that I learned through the years.

00:20:01.140 I think there was a time when I was an assistant coach

00:20:03.700 when I didn't do that very well.

00:20:09.140 You know, it was work, work, work, work, take your work home,

00:20:13.620 never, ever be able to separate.

00:20:15.260 but when I became a head coach I learned how to do that because it was just too stressful

00:20:21.820 to carry it with you all the time and I had to set some parameters and say okay at 10 o'clock

00:20:29.940 at night I'm going home I'm not working past 10 o'clock so I can get enough rest because if I

00:20:35.120 don't rest I'm not going to have the patience to do a good job the next day yeah so there was some

00:20:40.240 of these kinds of built-in things that I had to, and then I make myself go on vacation for three

00:20:46.580 weeks in the summer. You have to make yourself do those things? Yeah. And, and bought a lake house

00:20:52.820 so I could spend three weeks with the kids. And, you know, so things like that, I kind of had to

00:20:57.820 learn how to do that because I was so committed. It was not healthy. Did it ever actually affect

00:21:04.480 your health? Like some of that stress? Cause I mean, you were like, I mean, watching you,

00:21:08.080 like, especially like in your documentary, it's pretty great to see like all these different and

00:21:11.500 they compile them all and make you seem kind of crazy for a little while. And you may have been,

00:21:15.480 I don't know. That's fine. I think you got to be a little bit crazy. And hopefully we all were a

00:21:19.620 little crazy at some point in our lives, you know, but, um, you can definitely, you feel the intensity

00:21:25.060 of you a lot of times. I mean, you, I mean, even not, and it's some of the footage is older. It's

00:21:29.600 not even high def. And you're like, you can still feel the intensity coming through the screen,

00:21:33.340 but but you got to understand that in a competitive environment i was trying to show

00:21:41.960 intensity uh does that make sense yeah i mean i i don't think i was ever

00:21:47.140 i mean you want players to play with emotion have intensity but you don't want them to be

00:21:53.760 emotional so most of those times when i look crazy i really wasn't being emotional i knew

00:21:59.500 exactly what I was doing, but I was trying to affect other people. Wow. Chess. That's chess,

00:22:06.300 Nick. Um, that's incredible then. Cause yeah, it affected me the other night at home. Um,

00:22:12.220 just watching it, but did, did, did it ever affect your health? Did it ever become like a

00:22:16.160 health scare for you? No, never did. But I always got a physical, you know, one of the things when

00:22:21.080 I was in the NFL, they always make you get a physical before the season, just like the players.

00:22:25.160 so i continued that in college and um you know several of our coaches had issues that

00:22:32.280 assistance too that um you know created a better quality of life for them and save their life in

00:22:39.220 some cases so i always did that um but when i retired and i don't know if i ever shared this

00:22:48.440 with anybody i spent 50 years of my life being in a hurry and didn't know it so i retired and

00:22:59.560 the cars are backed up on the bridge and it goes down to one lane and in the old days i would be

00:23:06.180 the guy that passed all the cars up and cut in at the last minute in front of somebody

00:23:10.360 and i sat there with miss terry in the car she says you mean you're not going to pass everybody

00:23:16.880 illegally and cut in i said we're not in a hurry but it's the first time when i retired that i

00:23:23.420 realized that i wasn't in a hurry and i was in a hurry for 50 years and didn't know it wow

00:23:29.200 because i was always hurrying up to the next thing yeah solve the next problem go to the

00:23:34.460 next thing i mean and it's great and you talk about relieving stress that relieves stress

00:23:40.960 better than anything and that was just the thing you noticed one day you just noticed that i just

00:23:44.880 noticed it in that circumstance right not cutting into traffic and waiting my turn right yes sometimes

00:23:50.580 we need proof from like our own actions and it'll almost surprise us like i realized one day that i

00:23:56.460 was like i felt like there's been a to-do list since i was born and i don't know who wrote it

00:24:00.820 or started it or how it ever began but i always feel like i'm running behind like it's been an

00:24:06.400 eternal feeling that i've had and i've always had the feeling that i wanted to get everything

00:24:11.080 that I needed to get done before I could relax.

00:24:15.820 Yeah, and it's never all done.

00:24:17.440 It's never all done.

00:24:18.100 Yeah, I know what you mean.

00:24:21.160 I know, man.

00:24:21.840 I'm 46.

00:24:22.580 I'm like, where is the end of this list?

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00:24:27.740 I didn't even put it together, I don't feel like.

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00:26:22.100 or visit ncpgambling.org there's a lot of fall moments i wish i had more of i remember one time

00:26:30.140 they had a big pile of leaves out there by the apartments and we all got all ready and we put

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00:27:36.560 near you. When it comes to coaching, how much of coaching is knowing football and how much of

00:27:42.360 Coaching is knowing people, do you feel like?

00:27:44.740 And which took you longer to learn?

00:27:47.720 Probably the knowing people part.

00:27:50.340 You know, coaching is teaching.

00:27:52.660 Teaching is ability to inspire learning.

00:27:56.420 Coaching is teaching.

00:27:57.740 Teaching is ability to inspire learning.

00:27:59.720 Right, exactly.

00:28:00.680 So that inspiring the learning part is the people part.

00:28:05.660 And everybody's a little different in terms of how they learn

00:28:10.240 and how you need to approach them to teach them.

00:28:14.200 You know, obsessive, compulsive people, they don't need you to get on them.

00:28:19.620 You know, other guys, not a self-starter, you need to get on them a little bit.

00:28:23.180 So figuring all that out is important.

00:28:25.220 The technical part of teaching and coming up with a good teaching progression,

00:28:29.820 whether it's how to teach bump and run or how to take on a block or whatever,

00:28:33.840 that part comes a little easier.

00:28:36.680 but the other part the human condition part is much more difficult did you enjoy that part more

00:28:44.520 you think i did because that was that was a big interest to me you know is what makes people tick

00:28:50.800 what what makes people you know do certain things good and bad yeah choices and decisions and

00:28:57.120 impact of all those things do you think maybe that you just wanted to find the next thing to

00:29:03.800 figure out. Does that make any sense if I say that? Because it's interesting to hear you talk

00:29:07.740 about so many little facets that could go into giving yourself the best possible chance.

00:29:14.840 Yeah. Yeah. I was always trying to learn. I mean, even to this day, I remember my dad saying,

00:29:22.880 you got two ears and one mouth, that means you should listen twice as much as you talk. You

00:29:26.240 probably heard that before. But anyway, so I've always been a listener and I always try to learn

00:29:33.080 from other people. And anybody that was doing something of significance in our profession

00:29:39.520 or a good book to read about a successful coach and how he approached it and all that kind of

00:29:46.920 stuff, I was always into that, always into that. And we always had people come and visit us.

00:29:53.100 Everything we had an issue with, we would pay somebody to come and visit us and teach us how

00:29:57.920 to fix it oh like different speakers and uh different speakers and some coaches you know

00:30:03.440 like we had problems with no huddle who's the best defensive people with no huddle guys playing

00:30:09.320 against chip kelly at oregon bring them in and teach us how do you play against this how do you

00:30:14.220 get people to adapt to it um so but you know we struggled in the sugar bowl and got beat by utah

00:30:23.040 because they were an empty the whole game and we didn't do a very good job of defending it

00:30:26.460 So I just brought Utah staff in and said, okay, you guys run empty.

00:30:30.700 Tell us what you don't like.

00:30:32.360 Got it.

00:30:32.900 What gives you problems?

00:30:34.100 So we were always looking for a better way.

00:30:37.040 And I told everybody in the organization, everybody's responsible for a better way.

00:30:42.160 So did you ever feel like, because ego is like a scary thing, right?

00:30:46.380 And your name became, I mean, you're, there are people that would bet, you know, would

00:30:50.640 rather baptize their kids with you involved somehow.

00:30:53.460 It seems like these days, especially in Alabama, right?

00:30:56.620 And bless them.

00:30:58.520 But how did you keep yourself from getting too smart to learn?

00:31:02.060 Does that make any sense?

00:31:03.320 Yeah.

00:31:03.760 And was it ever a fear of yours, like at a certain point?

00:31:06.020 Because ego is a unique thing, right?

00:31:07.760 Sometimes our shadow gets bigger than us, right?

00:31:09.920 Right.

00:31:10.240 If the lights hit us the right way.

00:31:12.160 So it's like, did you ever have to deal with any of that?

00:31:14.480 Just curious, because you've had such a unique journey.

00:31:16.760 Well, you know, one of the things I always did when I went to church is I always prayed

00:31:24.420 to be a good person and to serve other people. And I ask the question a lot when I speak sometimes

00:31:32.900 is how do you pray? Do you pray to be blessed or do you pray to be a blessing? Well, I was praying

00:31:38.420 that I wanted to continue to be a blessing to other people, which probably was me trying to

00:31:44.540 check my own ego and make sure it didn't get out there to where it was going to have a negative

00:31:49.600 effect on things. And I'm sure you could probably go find a lot of people. I mean, there was like

00:31:55.380 70 people got interviewed or 90 people got interviewed in this documentary that would say,

00:32:00.820 yeah, he had an ego, but I tried to keep it in check. You tried to cap it. Yeah. Yeah, dude.

00:32:07.260 Yeah. Because the ego is such an interesting thing. What if you had players? How did you

00:32:11.300 curtail players if they started to get kind of too big for themselves? Was there something that

00:32:14.720 you would say? Like, you know, because that's a lot of energy for a young person to be taken

00:32:22.840 on when they don't really even know the effects of it. Right. Well, I was always trying to teach

00:32:27.500 players cause and effect. And, you know, I would bring every player in and say, all right, what do

00:32:34.420 you want to accomplish here? And a player would say, I want to graduate and play in the NFL someday.

00:32:39.380 And then I would say, do you know what that entails?

00:32:43.060 And he would say, hard work.

00:32:44.420 And I'd say, well, you've got to do this, this, this, and this, this.

00:32:47.440 I was defining a process of what they had to do to be successful.

00:32:51.360 And I wanted them to learn how to self-assess, so I'd ask them how they're doing.

00:32:55.240 But I'd also go up to them a lot and say, how's that behavior helping you accomplish the goals that you have?

00:33:02.760 And then they would usually answer, well, it's not, coach.

00:33:07.520 so to help them have an actual thought process with right and i try to make it about them right

00:33:12.080 you know not about oh i don't like it that you spike the ball tell me if spiking the ball helps

00:33:17.080 you get to the nfl right does that help you graduate i mean so i made it about them a lot

00:33:22.680 and and they they related to that you know most people are selfish self-absorbed and um ambitious

00:33:29.640 so appeal to that right you know i used to tell the players um you know i spent eight years in

00:33:38.060 the nfl the two most compelling words in the draft report is and and but and they would look at me

00:33:45.180 like i don't sound right and i'd say yeah they'd read the player you know his quick feet change

00:33:51.480 the direction good tackler good hands play the ball in the deep part of the field talking about

00:33:56.180 the defensive back now and he's a good person you know he graduated coaches loved him he was

00:34:02.120 captain of the team next guy same guy quick feet change of direction good tackler all that

00:34:08.300 but what comes after but usually not good yeah all right wouldn't go to class coaches didn't

00:34:15.880 like him watched him practice wasn't a good practice player yeah had a positive drug test

00:34:20.720 I mean, whatever. So who do you want on a team? And and but. So are you making choices and

00:34:25.880 decisions that creates value for your future? Because we're trying to provide you with a

00:34:31.980 direction that's value-based. Buy into it, and you will create value for your future.

00:34:39.280 You talked a second ago about going to church and praying. How did you start a relationship

00:34:43.420 with God? Was that instilled in you when you were a child? And then how did you create your

00:34:48.420 own relationship that was more real in your life if you did, or what was that like?

00:34:52.980 Well, my grandmother used to take her umbrella and beat me over the head as we were going

00:34:59.960 to church.

00:35:02.180 I didn't have a choice.

00:35:04.260 That's one way to do it, yeah.

00:35:06.500 I mean, I think that's pretty effective.

00:35:08.240 Your grandma's umbrella will put the Lord in you.

00:35:10.860 They'll keep your posture up, too.

00:35:12.180 no but um you know i i just i don't know and i i guess it started because i felt guilty if i didn't

00:35:25.800 do it and i think i was made to feel that way by my family my grandparents and um so it was

00:35:35.080 important to them that we all go to church and that's the way it started i can't say i liked it

00:35:40.420 but I did it. Um, and, um, then I got into it and I think there's a lot that you can learn from,

00:35:48.620 you know, biblical, you know, experiences that happened in the past. And I always try to see,

00:35:55.740 you know, is this message helpful to me? Was there a time in your life when you called on

00:36:00.700 God the most kind of to be supportive for you or that you really needed your faith

00:36:04.440 more than you expected? Well, you know, I usually do it because I'm always asking,

00:36:11.440 like, what could I do better to be a better parent? You know, can I be a good leader to

00:36:17.360 my children and help them make choices and decisions that would help them be successful?

00:36:23.800 And now you have grandchildren. So, you know, you're trying to do the same thing for your

00:36:28.000 grandchildren. So it's more about what could I do to impact other people in a positive way

00:36:35.560 than really, you know, I don't think God determines the outcome of a game or anything

00:36:41.200 like that. So it was never about all that, but it was always trying to, what can I do better to

00:36:47.280 help people? What made you care about people so much, do you think? I mean, I know it's a human

00:36:52.580 thing to do but i i think that it came from coaching uh because my coaches that i had whether

00:37:05.120 in high school or you know my dad was my peewee coach my parents were great at this but beyond my

00:37:12.360 parents my the coaches that i had don james in college um and my high school coach that they had

00:37:21.180 the greatest impact on me and I never really wanted to be a coach but when it happened that

00:37:27.040 I was coaching that's what I wanted to be to the players that I coached and so I guess that's how

00:37:34.960 it happened and I got a lot of positive gratification out of that and I think that was the difference

00:37:40.300 between being in the NFL and being in college you know I love the competition in the NFL I love

00:37:46.200 coaching the players i love the strategy of the game and all that but there was a lot more self

00:37:51.840 gratification in college about helping people yeah because they were at the right age where

00:37:57.240 you could impact them you know 18 to 22 and they all still had goals and aspirations of what they

00:38:03.700 were trying to accomplish so um and i think that's why i ended up landing in college you've kind of

00:38:11.180 run like it seems like i'm not run but it seems like some people would say that they had like

00:38:14.480 the Saban Rehabilitation Center for coaches that have kind of gone awry at certain moments, right?

00:38:19.700 What was your determining factors for if a coach was a good fit for you on your staff?

00:38:26.360 Well, you know, I wanted people that had character so that they would set a good example for the

00:38:32.520 players. I think the players needed mentors and people that they could look up to. They needed

00:38:38.380 to be knowledgeable, but they needed to be good teachers, have good teaching preparation and

00:38:45.260 presentation in terms of what they did. And they had to be a good fit. And you use the word ego

00:38:51.120 before. And I think with coaches, sometimes you have to respect the other coaches and work with

00:38:56.500 them and work together for what the best interest of the team is, not necessarily what's the

00:39:03.280 self-indulgent behavior of what's best for you if that makes any sense and um like how would that

00:39:09.340 play out for a coach like that it would be like a self-indulgent behavior just like the offensive

00:39:13.520 coordinator is more worried about scoring points than he is winning the game got it uh oh that can

00:39:18.940 be a trap huh yeah and you know you end up fumbling the ball at the end of the game rather

00:39:24.340 than running it when you're supposed to because you put winning first so um but you know when

00:39:31.740 you ask about the rehabilitation part of it is you know all the coaches that I had on the staff

00:39:39.700 you know people think discipline is punishment discipline is really doing something to somebody

00:39:47.140 that changes their behavior so it was easy for me with players because they all wanted to play

00:39:55.140 So if I said, if you don't go to class, you're not playing,

00:40:00.300 or if you don't put having positive drug tests, you're not going to play,

00:40:04.600 they would change their behavior because it was something significant to them.

00:40:09.480 You know, my daughter was always on the Internet, always on the computer.

00:40:12.460 If you take the computer away, you could get her to do study,

00:40:17.200 clean up the kitchen, do whatever you wanted.

00:40:19.540 But it was what was significant to her.

00:40:21.540 so I looked at the same thing as coaches you know you say these guys had issues and problems

00:40:26.960 but they all got penalized for the issues and problems that they had whether they got fired

00:40:33.740 or whatever but they had some really really good qualities that got them to where they were

00:40:40.340 because they were successful at some point in their career as an offensive coordinator and

00:40:46.440 even some cases as a head coach and whatever this issue that they got penalized for now they all

00:40:54.640 of a sudden want to change their behavior so that they get another opportunity to be a coach

00:41:00.480 and I always just said can I manage this guy can I manage this can I manage the issue

00:41:06.060 because I know there'll be a positive in terms of what the guy brings to the organization

00:41:11.680 if it's negative doesn't bring it down yeah so and we were able to do that but in every one of

00:41:19.260 those circumstance that person knew that if they had one more stub of the toe it was going to be

00:41:26.980 career ending for them yeah so they were willing to change their behavior you had a lot of guys in

00:41:32.400 your coaching tree sort of um that were kind of that have been under you or i don't know if that's

00:41:37.180 a term to use, but that have been part of your coaching tree over the years. Kiffin, Jimbo,

00:41:43.260 Kirby Smart, Lanning, Sark. What was it like when they started to become this pack that was then

00:41:51.800 like trying to beat you? Like, did that become its own thing that kind of added actually some

00:41:57.340 extra excitement for you? Like, what did that, what did that feel like? Cause that's pretty

00:42:01.620 fascinating kind of yeah well you know when you play somebody that really knows you

00:42:07.000 that makes things a little different does it make it harder it makes a little harder because i think

00:42:15.240 you got to tweak things and change things a little bit which may you may not be comfortable with

00:42:19.600 do you think you liked almost that it made a little bit harder uh i like competing against

00:42:24.840 those guys but um i knew that i had a lot of respect for them because they had done a tremendous

00:42:30.840 job for me and i was glad that they all got opportunities so um because they did a good job

00:42:37.800 uh and it was always a challenge to replace them because they did such a good job um so but it was

00:42:46.540 you know i think we we all kind of respect each other as competitors and you know you probably

00:42:53.480 have some friend that you competed against that it was more fun to beat them uh because they were

00:43:00.720 your friend and it gave you kind of bragging rights even though you might not have bragged

00:43:05.360 about it yeah it still gave you the right just even on the text thread or whatever yeah so um

00:43:10.180 which one of those coaches that i mentioned a few minutes ago which one kind of do you feel like

00:43:13.920 learned the most from you you know i can't you'd probably need to ask them that it's hard for me

00:43:19.920 to know but um i i think they all have their own style and when each one of them left whoever it

00:43:27.240 was to go take a head coaching job. Mario, Cristobal, it doesn't matter, Kirby or whatever.

00:43:32.080 I said, the most important thing you have to do is be yourself. Be yourself. Don't try to be like

00:43:38.380 somebody else. Don't try to be like me. I mean, you can take some of the technical things that

00:43:43.040 we did here and the way we built the program and use those things to your benefit, but you have to

00:43:49.540 be yourself. You have to be you. Why? Because trying to do somebody else's thing is just a

00:43:54.380 trap you feel like? No, I think you have to be authentic and people have to see you as being

00:43:59.760 authentic and people have to see you as believing, you know, in what you're trying to preach or teach

00:44:05.680 or whatever. Got it. When you were, when you were recruiting, did you drive? Did you go with somebody

00:44:10.400 else, dude, or sir? And did you drive or did somebody else drive? Like if you went? Yeah,

00:44:16.380 most of the time I went with an assistant. And would you let them drive or would you drive?

00:44:20.260 They would drive most of the time.

00:44:21.980 I remember one time we were in Iowa, Mario Cristobal's Cuban from South Florida.

00:44:27.520 Oh, yeah, he's great.

00:44:28.560 And he eats all the snacks.

00:44:30.280 He's been eating all the snacks down there.

00:44:32.080 And I love the guy, and he's done a great job in Miami.

00:44:34.900 But we're in Iowa recruiting a player in the dead of winter, and, I mean, it's a blizzard.

00:44:41.100 Sideways.

00:44:41.760 I mean, the snow's going sideways, blowing crazy.

00:44:44.940 He'd never driven in snow before.

00:44:46.420 I said, Mario, let me drive.

00:44:48.540 and he was so prideful you know that he wouldn't let me drive i mean i grew up in west virginia we

00:44:54.920 had snow i lived in michigan i lived in ohio yeah so i was used to driving in the snow oh yeah no

00:45:00.600 way was he gonna let me drive all right so we survived barely but he just wouldn't let you do

00:45:06.680 it yeah dang maybe he thought that warm like because they got that the machismo or whatever

00:45:12.140 maybe he thought that would melchell's path or something i have no idea no he's a extremely hard

00:45:16.580 worker and a great recruiter is really good yeah it was really good recruiter developed great

00:45:22.180 relationships with players and he's done a great job in miami i just can't imagine you letting

00:45:27.700 somebody else drive that's the part that i think is tough for me to think about that part

00:45:31.620 but you know it's so hard to sit there and let somebody else drive but i i would actually

00:45:36.200 get work done oh i see and i would go to all these places that um i i didn't know my way around

00:45:44.080 Now, when I was an assistant coach and I went recruiting, I went by myself.

00:45:48.080 I knew my way around, so I was confident.

00:45:50.620 And, you know, we didn't have GPS and cell phones and all that stuff back in the day.

00:45:55.220 But all these assistants now, they've got to type it in their phone and get directions.

00:46:02.380 I don't even know how to do that.

00:46:04.100 So I let them handle that part of it.

00:46:06.840 but when I was a head coach at like LSU and you and the head coach was allowed to go to spring

00:46:14.260 practice I would go a lot of times on my own and just go you know to watch guys practice because

00:46:21.080 I you can tell so much more about a player if you see them live than you can looking at a film

00:46:27.080 but um I loved that and it was great and you know there were two coaches that did it Erdmeyer did a

00:46:32.920 great job of that and i did it and they passed a rule that we couldn't go out on the road oh that's

00:46:38.460 a saving rule isn't it yeah that's what they call it did you ever get into a place where you were

00:46:43.440 not welcome like did you ever pull up on a porch or something knock on somebody's door where you

00:46:47.120 were just not welcome yeah when i first went to lsu in new orleans and you know you know south

00:46:53.880 americana the people were not happy with lsu and there was several families i went in and they just

00:47:00.800 said we're just not interested in in talking to you and we had to actually prove ourselves that

00:47:06.820 we were going to create value for players I mean we built an academic center there we took the

00:47:12.540 graduation rate from the low 30s to 72 percent I think in four years and we won the national

00:47:20.520 championship so but we had to prove ourselves in terms of how we were going to create value

00:47:25.300 for players other than just football yeah i i will say this when you've gotten to a campus and

00:47:30.700 when you've left it it's looked nicer that's a fact i mean alabama looks beautiful these days

00:47:36.980 that campus is beautiful and we you know that community's changed a lot in the last 20 years

00:47:42.560 and you know the school has gotten bigger so that created some growth um but they had a plan

00:47:48.840 of, you know, if we improve the quality of the education

00:47:54.200 and we improve the enrollment with a lot of out-of-state students,

00:47:58.960 that would provide the resources for us to redo the whole campus,

00:48:02.700 which they basically did.

00:48:05.040 And, you know, football is kind of the window that, you know,

00:48:08.920 people look at an institution.

00:48:10.780 So us having success in football probably helped them do that.

00:48:14.740 Yeah.

00:48:15.100 I mean, it looks great.

00:48:15.900 It's great over there.

00:48:17.080 It's beautiful.

00:48:17.780 It really is.

00:48:18.320 it's beautiful um did you leave football because of the recruiting because of the nil like is that

00:48:24.480 kind of one of the main things that's sort of what people say just off the cuff right

00:48:29.120 is that kind of the truth or did you just feel like you had achieved enough well it's not the

00:48:35.320 reason i left um in fact we had name image and likeness i think the last three years that i

00:48:41.240 coached and having been in the nfl managing the salary cap and all that it wasn't that big an

00:48:48.520 issue but i could see that players were changing and i could see that the way you were going people

00:48:55.380 were making more transactional decisions in other words it was more about how much money you're going

00:49:02.160 to pay me than how are you going to develop me and i think we always sort of created more value

00:49:09.820 for players in terms of personal development academic development and football development

00:49:15.820 and we had proof in the pudding you know we had high graduation rate fewer guys getting in trouble

00:49:22.080 most guys drafted most first round draft picks so we had proof that we were creating this value

00:49:28.980 now as the the table started to turn we were going to have to change the way we did things and

00:49:34.420 because it was going to be more about how much you paid some guys to get them to come

00:49:38.260 and that was okay because I'd been in a league where that was what it was all about in the NFL.

00:49:44.200 I mean, players are playing for money. They're trying to play well so they can make more money

00:49:48.260 and they're trying to extend their career so they can make money for longer. So I was okay with all

00:49:53.640 that. I think for me, I never wanted to ride the program down. I see. Like you wanted to kind of

00:50:01.920 end on a high note. Right. I never wanted a coach where my age and my inability to have a positive

00:50:08.200 impact was going to start to see the program go down and um and and i felt like at 72 years old

00:50:17.960 that last season season was really really hard you know we lost early on and um the team really

00:50:26.720 improved and we got in playoffs and they did a fantastic job but it was very challenging and

00:50:33.100 i just i didn't know what i was going to do i mean i think this is in the documentary that

00:50:40.340 i'm sitting there i got a four o'clock team meeting i got two speeches i got one that says

00:50:44.860 i'm staying and this is how what we got to do to we had a young team so we would have been good the

00:50:51.080 next year um this is what we have to do and then over here i'm going to tell the players i'm going

00:50:58.260 to retire. And that was 10 minutes till four, and I didn't know which one I was going to do.

00:51:05.320 How'd you decide? I called Ms. Terry, and she said, you know, if you're that stressed out about

00:51:11.740 it, and there's that much turmoil, you know you have to do this at some point in time,

00:51:18.180 whether it's this year, next year, or the next year. So if you feel that much anxiety about

00:51:27.160 making the decision maybe now's the time to do it while you still have your health and quality

00:51:34.200 of life is good enough that we can do other things so that's basically you know what brought

00:51:41.540 us to that decision was it the toughest decision like that you felt like you had to make in your

00:51:45.380 toughest decision yeah really maybe ever yeah it's really hard i've been part of a team for

00:51:51.020 so long and enjoyed the relationship to the players and had such great relationships with

00:51:56.720 players and knew a lot of those players sitting in that room came there because you know of

00:52:02.380 the University of Alabama but also because I was the coach and generations of families

00:52:08.640 generations of ships with the the assistant coaches and the staff and I knew all that

00:52:13.120 was going to get blowing up and that was the hardest thing was to change the changes it

00:52:20.160 created for everyone else and was that a kind of a weird drive home after that like how did that

00:52:25.660 feel after i mean it's kind of that's huge yeah it was it was it was a weird drive home well well

00:52:33.360 said i feel like that day when you get home and you set your keys on the counter they kind of make

00:52:37.520 a different sound you know yeah they do but it also was a relief in a lot of ways that you didn't

00:52:48.000 have the stress of continuing or worrying about making the correct decision right and i do think

00:52:56.700 it was the correct decision for me and miss terry and our family because you know i miss my kids

00:53:05.580 growing up i didn't really want to miss my grandkids growing up so this has given me a little

00:53:11.260 bit more time to have those relationships did did it ever bleed over where like you were coaching

00:53:16.040 and fathering where they almost became the same thing sometimes like just because it was so much

00:53:20.120 like that would seem like there would be some maybe crossover in that space

00:53:25.140 well i i thought that it was really important that because i didn't have a lot of time with

00:53:32.180 my kids that i made sure that the time i had with them was quality time and like how'd you do that

00:53:39.380 a lot of the same things that help you be successful in life are the same things that

00:53:45.760 would help you be successful in football right and um in any sport for that matter so um we tried

00:53:53.160 to teach those values and you know our kids turned out pretty well so i'm not disappointed in that

00:54:00.460 yeah what's something that you admire most about each one of your uh you have two children right

00:54:04.980 yeah what's something that you admire most about each one of them well nicholas works in our

00:54:09.940 mercedes dealership in birmingham and he's a general sales manager and he works his butt off

00:54:14.740 and he's all into it and committed to it,

00:54:18.820 and I'm proud of the fact that he's very productive doing that.

00:54:22.320 I think he's a good father to his daughter.

00:54:26.120 He's got a good wife, and I think they do well, and I'm very proud of him.

00:54:31.360 Kristen has a son, and I think she does a good job of parenting and a good mother,

00:54:36.640 and we're always trying to be helpful in how we can help him,

00:54:40.980 and he's a boy, so he plays everything, soccer, baseball.

00:54:44.740 uh the only thing i hate is every time i go to try to watch them play i get bombarded with kids

00:54:50.560 wanting autographs and all that which i'm never going to tell the kids no but i'd like to watch

00:54:55.200 the game too so um that creates a little bit of a conflict but it's all good like yeah what are

00:55:01.820 the things that you get to see about your grandkids that you almost maybe like not missed out on as a

00:55:05.720 dad but it's like it almost gives you a second chance i guess it's like yeah does being a

00:55:09.960 grandfather give you like a second chance almost a little bit yeah and it's not it's that you

00:55:15.940 didn't have time you know like we we only had a family dinner on wednesday night it was the only

00:55:25.560 night that i came home and we had a family dinner where everybody sat down together at dinner can

00:55:31.740 you imagine your family only is one night a week you eat together um one of the things that

00:55:39.580 as Terry did because of that was Sunday is the day that I didn't like the most because

00:55:46.600 you had to finish the game you just played, start preparation for the next game. So it was a grind

00:55:53.700 on Sunday and you didn't see the players on Sunday. So she instituted five o'clock to six

00:56:00.460 o'clock was family dinner. So everybody brought their kids, all the assistant coaches brought

00:56:05.820 their kids our kids our grandkids everybody had to come for one hour on sunday so everybody had

00:56:11.580 to get together so that was the kind of stuff that she could see that was needed that was great

00:56:18.600 for morale of the staff and the families who were supporting the staff that made made a big difference

00:56:26.680 yeah i think having just a backup set of eyes like that is nice you know very nice because

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00:58:23.820 Point your toes west.

00:58:25.040 um the cfp now uh what do you what do you think they should do with that because last year it

00:58:32.240 felt kind of wonky right it felt like some teams should be in almost a different division like a

00:58:37.380 different big tournament you know that maybe they should have two tournaments for some of the larger

00:58:41.840 schools and then some of the smaller schools what do you think the solution is there um and what do

00:58:46.860 you worry about the most well me personally i think that people want to see the best 12 teams

00:58:54.740 in the playoffs i think to get to a 12 team playoff we had to do what was politically correct

00:59:01.200 and make sure we included some of the schools that weren't in the power conferences yeah it's

00:59:08.560 a dei division inclusion right yeah so and i get that part but i think each year we try to take

00:59:15.140 some steps to make it better like it was not good that notre dame didn't get into playoffs last year

00:59:22.000 and it would have been bad if they got in and Miami didn't get in

00:59:24.960 because I said Miami is going to be one of the toughest teams in the playoffs

00:59:29.440 and go a long way, and they went all the way to the finals

00:59:32.220 and almost beat Indiana.

00:59:34.040 So people just want to see the best teams.

00:59:39.000 And I think the other thing is we've got to come up with better metrics

00:59:42.360 to determine strength of schedule.

00:59:47.240 Like the question got asked at the SEC meetings this year,

00:59:50.880 texas loses to ohio state 14-7 now they had a bad loss at florida but they end up nine and three

01:00:00.820 so the question was if we'd have played texas state instead of ohio state and ended up 10 and

01:00:05.380 two would we have gotten in the playoffs and they had a hard time answering that question

01:00:09.340 so that in and of itself says the metrics for how we determine strength of schedule

01:00:16.180 is not what it needs to be right and we always just look at how many wins a team has

01:00:23.000 and just like the sec there were six teams in the top 10 they're all going to play each other

01:00:29.700 so they're not going to end up in the top 10 but they're all really good opponents yeah so you're

01:00:35.200 playing a difficult strength of schedule and that should be taken into consideration like i think

01:00:41.920 they do a better job of that in basketball you know they say if you beat so many top 10 teams

01:00:46.060 you get so many points you beat 11 to 30 you get so many points you get nothing for playing

01:00:51.540 somebody who's not in the top 50 so they have a better way to sort of figure out strength of

01:00:57.640 scheduling who gets in the tournament well with the evolution of it so it's an evolving thing

01:01:02.020 you're saying right and with the evolution of it it does seem like immediately kind of bowl games

01:01:06.620 turned into just something that's more of a fun thing it almost like the tradition of a lot of

01:01:10.960 the bowl games sort of seems like they kind of fell by the wayside quick yeah and that's one of

01:01:15.980 the things that back 10 15 years ago when people wanted to expand the playoffs i said if we expand

01:01:25.740 the playoffs we're going to make bowl games obsolete players are not going to want to play

01:01:32.020 in them fans are not going to go to them they're not going to get supported and bowl games have

01:01:38.160 been you know a tradition in college sports and it was a reward for a team going eight and four

01:01:46.740 and the team gets to go to a bowl game the fan base gets to travel and that's all going to go

01:01:52.040 away because the playoffs will become the standard of whether you had a good season or a bad season

01:01:59.820 and we had 33 coaches get fired last year because the playoffs have become the standard

01:02:04.880 and everybody expects their team to get in the playoffs.

01:02:08.360 And that can't happen.

01:02:09.440 There's 12 teams that get in the playoffs.

01:02:11.220 Now, we may expand to playoffs in the future.

01:02:13.280 I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing.

01:02:14.840 The only thing I'm concerned about is there is a limit

01:02:18.400 to how many games a college player should play.

01:02:21.940 There are three or four times where we played 15 games in a season,

01:02:25.460 and I thought that was too many.

01:02:28.080 Now you've got potentially 17 games that you could play.

01:02:31.480 So I think we've got to be careful about that.

01:02:34.880 Well, do you have a say in that sort of thing?

01:02:36.800 Like, are you on the committee?

01:02:38.640 I don't have any say.

01:02:40.300 Have you ever met those people?

01:02:41.460 Who is the committee?

01:02:43.520 I mean, is it real people or is it just a bot?

01:02:45.680 They're real people.

01:02:46.960 I just wonder if it's like an AI or something.

01:02:48.480 It's like, who even knows?

01:02:49.600 You know, everything's kind of confusing now.

01:02:52.900 Do you think social media had a big change on people?

01:02:56.620 You kind of coached across this timeframe

01:02:58.820 where people didn't have social media

01:03:01.240 and people were just like living in the eyes on you

01:03:03.880 were just one another's and the Lord's, that was it, you know? And then this other thing came along

01:03:08.500 where, you know, we all kind of had the ability to watch each other. What do you think the effect

01:03:13.540 of social media was on players over time? Did you notice any effect? Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that

01:03:20.360 in the old days, you know, players were more motivated from within

01:03:26.800 and weren't necessarily exposed to what other people thought so it didn't matter as much

01:03:35.760 i think what social media has done is created an external factor that impacts a lot of people

01:03:44.300 in other words what other people say about me is meaningful so as opposed to my relationship

01:03:50.640 with myself right it's not about what i think of myself it's about what everybody else thinks of

01:03:56.640 me like i used to say to our players all the time and people have heard me say this publicly before

01:04:01.840 is i see players on their phone getting upset because somebody puts a post on there that's

01:04:07.460 negative about the way they played or something or whatever and i'd say why do you care about what

01:04:13.420 some fat guy running around in his underwear living in his mother's basement probably pierced

01:04:18.840 nipples coach yeah puts on the internet about what kind of football player you are why why would that

01:04:24.660 matter to you? Yeah. More than what matters to yourself in terms of the truth about how did you

01:04:31.740 play? What do you need to get better? What habits do you need to change? You know, what things do

01:04:37.780 you need to overcome? What work needs to be done to make you better? You have no control of what

01:04:44.260 those people say. Focus on what you can control. And when you take that out of the internal,

01:04:50.460 right? You take that relationship, but when you put that out into the external, all that energy

01:04:54.860 goes out into the external too. Now this motivation is from this foreign thing. And it's not really

01:05:00.280 this like scale of a relationship with you inside of yourself of value. And what do I think? And

01:05:06.360 what output do I want to have? And what do I think of, um, of the outcome that I'm creating for

01:05:11.120 myself? I don't think, I don't even think we know the long-term effects of like that whole thing of

01:05:15.440 taking like all of this, like this, this, like this template of our own relationship with

01:05:21.820 ourselves and putting it into this external place. It's kind of, it's really kind of crazy.

01:05:25.400 I know you said, you said, that was very well said what you just said.

01:05:29.000 Was it really?

01:05:29.600 And I agree with you 100%.

01:05:31.440 Dude, that's awesome. Thank you. Oh gosh. I got to write that down. Um, I will say this,

01:05:37.620 when we got to go, like just when I was touring with comedy, we got to meet you. We got to meet

01:05:41.600 coach moffett over there at texas a&m awesome guy um and but one of the best times that we had was

01:05:48.060 we went went to the uh alabama campus and they took us just on a tour of the facilities and

01:05:52.620 stuff it's pretty magnificent they got over there ty simpson gave us a tour everywhere it's pretty

01:05:56.540 cool we had a great time well ty's a great young man no doubt and but we built all those facilities

01:06:04.120 they weren't there when we got there oh i believe that and they the commitment that the university

01:06:10.540 made the athletic department made people made to give us the tools to do what we wanted to do

01:06:17.800 to support the players the way we wanted to support them um with facilities academic support

01:06:24.340 food whatever it was medical treatment medical training mental health we had it all and they

01:06:30.940 did a great job and it was very beneficial and helpful to us being able to build a program

01:06:35.300 oh yeah i mean this structure is there you know um let's look real quick just at lane kiffin right

01:06:42.800 it's an interesting thing that's going on here right we can all say that right like uh lane's

01:06:47.700 a buddy of mine right and so i love like lane's the only coach that has two rosters basically as

01:06:52.720 well active how do things end up with lane overall do you think because it's usually been kind of

01:06:58.440 taboo if there was like a coach that was like kind of a single guy right what do you think's

01:07:03.500 going on down there oh i don't make any predictions about things like that but i will say that lane

01:07:10.080 is a really good coach uh did a great job for us he's a fantastic play caller he's got a great

01:07:16.960 ability to recognize what the other team's doing and adapt in the game yeah to take advantage of

01:07:22.400 it he's a really good recruiter he relates well with players uh and i think you know that's all

01:07:28.800 change a little bit you know we've got it a little more liberal in this whole uh what's the

01:07:34.020 expectation for how you should be as a person relative to how you can still lead um and you

01:07:43.080 know i was always wanting to set a good example and i think it's important that that's a part of

01:07:48.980 it but you can set a good example in other ways other than just your personal life he's not married

01:07:54.320 so oh yeah i think it's fine i just think it's interesting you know that you've kind of had like

01:07:58.320 But I think it's a little more acceptable, you know, now than maybe back in the day.

01:08:04.420 Yeah.

01:08:04.840 So.

01:08:05.740 I agree.

01:08:07.160 Do you, you know, if, say, if, so recruiting is kind of, do you think the value of recruiting

01:08:12.720 is still the same or it's.

01:08:14.140 No.

01:08:14.780 Okay.

01:08:15.320 No.

01:08:15.500 So if that's not there, what becomes the new value of a coach to an organization?

01:08:22.440 Do you feel like, how does that kind of morph or evolve?

01:08:25.540 Does that make sense to you what I'm asking?

01:08:26.980 No, absolutely.

01:08:27.720 Okay.

01:08:28.320 So how do you evaluate the players?

01:08:32.120 Who are you going to pay?

01:08:34.260 What positions are most important?

01:08:36.640 Because if you pay the wrong guys, and you've heard me say this before,

01:08:39.860 you're shit out of luck.

01:08:40.740 So when you can't evaluate the players and you don't pay the right guys,

01:08:45.320 you're going to pay the consequences for that in the future

01:08:48.460 because you're going to spend all this money,

01:08:50.600 you're not going to have a very good team,

01:08:52.140 and you're not going to get the outcome everybody expects.

01:08:54.600 and then the cause and effect of this paying players is we're raising money from alumni

01:09:00.260 who now think they should have a say in what happens and that's why 33 coaches got fired last

01:09:06.240 year because of boosters yeah they have a say yeah so i guess the value that a lot of the value is

01:09:12.260 going to become in like judgment like the ability to be a judge of character character and talent

01:09:18.640 and ability if you don't look talent is not talent if you can't use it so if you don't have

01:09:24.840 character to go with it you probably can't use it and it's not just in sports i mean nobody

01:09:33.060 nobody that's not really really smart gets in medical school you got to be really really smart

01:09:39.600 yeah everybody doesn't make it talented enough but they don't make it well some reason for that

01:09:45.420 Yeah. So and some of them that make it don't make very good doctors. So I always say talent is not talent if you don't if you can't use it, which means you have to have some kind of competitive character to make the kind of choices and decisions to create the habits. So you can recruit talent, but accountability and commitment you have to develop. Got it. And most of the time you can develop it.

01:10:11.240 So it's going to be the coaches that can have the judge of character,

01:10:13.780 but then also the ability to help their players create those things.

01:10:17.500 Yeah, and also have the talent.

01:10:20.360 What do you tell a player now that can have a couple of million dollars in his bank account?

01:10:25.400 What do you say to these young men at 20 years old that other coaches might not be telling them

01:10:30.280 because they're afraid that they're going to lose them

01:10:32.060 or they're afraid that they're going to upset the apple cart in some way?

01:10:37.380 What would you tell these young men if you could?

01:10:39.180 Don't let the money change you.

01:10:40.740 You know, stay focused on the things that you can control to develop value for your future because there's a lot more value out there.

01:10:48.900 But I will say one thing that's very interesting to me.

01:10:53.920 Former players that played for us, I'm not mentioning any names.

01:10:59.400 They didn't make the money.

01:11:02.240 They didn't get paid.

01:11:03.480 They played.

01:11:04.360 They created value.

01:11:05.640 They made a lot of money in the NFL.

01:11:07.340 They played for a long time.

01:11:08.620 and one of them said to me the other day that was kind of alarming said if I would have gotten paid

01:11:18.600 two million dollars when I played here I don't know if I would have become the man I became

01:11:25.060 I don't know if I would have developed into the player I became I don't know that I wouldn't have

01:11:31.040 but I don't know if I could have handled that at 18 and 19 years old and I don't know if I would

01:11:37.080 have become what I was able to become. Wow. Pretty interesting. Yeah. If you kind of live

01:11:43.780 long enough, you can kind of see this, how the certain steps were shaped and the ones that maybe

01:11:48.800 helped you and ones that didn't, you know, over time. I think that's one of the blessings about

01:11:52.540 being alive is you get to see how all the little magic kind of worked out the little things that

01:11:56.180 maybe you didn't even know if they would. Yeah. I don't want to forget to ask about Sabin. That's

01:12:01.980 name of the documentary it's a six-part series um what can people expect out of it you know this

01:12:08.460 documentary is a little bit of a scrapbook you know my mom kept a scrapbook of when i was a player

01:12:17.020 and this will be the scrapbook for the future yeah of what we did and it's kind of a navigation

01:12:24.940 of how did we develop this program and all the people from friends family growing up

01:12:34.680 to coaches and players and people who impacted oh yeah and for the fans it's going to be an

01:12:42.060 interesting look from inside out because they did things like i gave like talks to the team and i

01:12:50.700 would never let the media hear what i said to the team in the locker room or in the team meeting or

01:12:55.420 whatever it was always taboo i didn't know alabama was filming all this stuff and putting it in an

01:13:00.800 archive i didn't even know they were doing it well we got all that stuff and put it in stock

01:13:07.060 so it's a it's an inside outlook at how did how did this program get developed and it should be

01:13:15.760 interesting for fans to be able to see that yeah you know i spent 20 30 hours in interviews and 70

01:13:22.100 people got interviewed and if i wrote a book it's just the book but now you got all these

01:13:27.940 personalities that you can see how this impacted and they related to this and how it helped them

01:13:33.520 be successful so i think this is going to be a scrapbook of the future for um this generation

01:13:40.600 and generations in the future just like my mom's little scrapbook yeah i think i love the fact that

01:13:46.600 there's you get you get all these different players and uh and in media personalities there's

01:13:52.020 like mark ingram who i love i see him at the ufc fights um rolanda mcclain yeah yeah um there's just

01:13:59.320 so many different characters oh your wife is in there um your son is in there there's so many

01:14:04.740 different like pieces of your life that uh that kind of like chime in about different little

01:14:09.340 things and it's fascinating to also to see the different schools you played at the different

01:14:12.880 coaching the different decisions that were going on um like i wish you got to coach drew breeze i

01:14:17.420 think that would have been awesome dude that would have been like i start thinking of little

01:14:20.840 things that i wish wanted to happen not in miami i would have wanted it to happen in new orleans but

01:14:24.760 still um but you know the drew breeze thing would have been we would have been successful in miami

01:14:32.580 if that would have worked out but then i'd never gone to alabama yeah because we'd have probably

01:14:38.580 ended up staying there because we could have had success and one of the reasons was you know with

01:14:44.700 getting call pepper he was injured he couldn't play not taking drew breeze because of his injury

01:14:51.420 which turned out not to be an issue because we don't have a quarterback of the future that's

01:14:58.880 pretty much why i was interested in going back to college because i didn't think we could be

01:15:03.540 successful in the nfl if you didn't have a quarterback and i thought that you could impact

01:15:07.820 You had more control of how you could impact your organization in college

01:15:14.160 because you could go recruit 25 players every year.

01:15:16.620 It wasn't a draft and all that.

01:15:19.080 And we didn't have any draft picks.

01:15:21.060 So I was happy to get the opportunity to go back,

01:15:24.680 and it's worked out tremendously.

01:15:27.300 I wouldn't probably be here if I didn't go back to Alabama

01:15:30.200 and have the success that we had.

01:15:32.300 What's something interesting that you've noticed

01:15:35.000 about yourself being away from coaching like what's something like because that's a long time

01:15:40.800 to be locked in in one sort of facet one sort of machine what's something that's you've either found

01:15:47.140 that you a new joy or just something that's different stress level is way down and it's

01:15:54.620 easier to enjoy other things because you're not so stressed about this one thing that you can't

01:16:03.080 enjoy other things. So now I can enjoy other things, people, relationships, have more fun,

01:16:11.540 laugh more. And all those things are pretty healthy, I think.

01:16:17.160 Do you think you'd have such a good time on game day? Are you enjoying it more than you

01:16:20.240 thought you would? I love it. I mean, your buddy, Pat, I was so anxious that first time we're over

01:16:27.820 in Ireland. I was so anxious. I'd never done that before. I got a lot of pride in performance. I

01:16:32.800 want to do a good job and i'm all worried and you know pat gets up there and he starts his stuff and

01:16:38.180 i'm saying this guy makes me feel like there's nothing i can do that's going to mess up yeah

01:16:45.020 so it just made me relax and uh has been so helpful um you know all the guys have been

01:16:53.040 oh you guys got a great group man i mean it's just so perfect and they're all so helpful and

01:16:58.360 they're all much more experienced than i am so they've they've really helped me grow and develop

01:17:04.480 but pat is what creates sort of the comfort level for me thinking i'm gonna do something wrong or

01:17:13.400 i'm gonna mess up so yeah you can't do anything better or worse than pat kind of in a loving way

01:17:20.780 i say that that was a good way to say it thank you he does it all thank you man he's he there's

01:17:27.420 nobody like him he is like there's there's nobody like that guy yeah and I love being on his little

01:17:32.940 show that he has every day I always go on Friday like at 12 15 or something oh the Pat McAfee show

01:17:39.400 you mean yeah yeah I love because the group of guys he has they're all football guys they ask

01:17:44.480 questions they're into it I love that little 20 minutes of bannering back and forth with those

01:17:50.680 guys it's great nice so do you think you're having more fun nowadays then yeah I mean I had fun

01:17:57.140 coaching yeah but there was there was this whole big pile of stress over here yeah and hard work

01:18:05.400 and little time to do anything else to have this much fun for this little bit of time before you

01:18:13.940 had the next challenge looking you in the eye yeah so um and then we won so many games oh that's

01:18:22.480 That the expectation got so high, it was almost like, do you really enjoy winning or are you just relieved that you didn't lose?

01:18:33.700 Right.

01:18:34.680 So now the fun starts minimizing itself.

01:18:43.480 So now the stress level is down.

01:18:47.060 The fun can go up.

01:18:49.020 It's easier to have relationships with people.

01:18:52.480 So, I mean, for years now, we don't have a lot of friends in Tuscaloosa

01:18:57.640 all the time I'm coaching because people call and say,

01:18:59.960 you want to go out to eat, you want to do this, you want to do that.

01:19:02.160 No, Nick's working at night, can't do it.

01:19:03.880 He's on the road recruiting.

01:19:05.780 So they quit calling.

01:19:07.780 Will Miss Terry come and eat at the office sometimes?

01:19:10.900 On Sunday for Sunday family dinner.

01:19:14.660 And Wednesday we ate as a family.

01:19:16.880 Yeah.

01:19:19.700 Man.

01:19:20.140 it's a long run it's a lot of sacrifice it is it's not coaching is not family friendly

01:19:28.320 and uh i think coaches are constantly trying to make it more family friendly in terms of things

01:19:35.220 that they do but does it have to be that high stress does it have to be you think

01:19:40.660 or do you think it sort of became this escalation ladder that made it even

01:19:44.540 i don't think there was any other way for me to do it got it hopefully there's other coaches that

01:19:53.080 can do it another way that it's not that way but i felt like for me to do it the way i was going to

01:20:01.280 feel good about the job i was doing that's how i had to do it and that was a trap that i couldn't

01:20:06.620 get out of yeah your own success almost became yeah it's almost a trap i guess huh that's wild

01:20:13.680 yeah i mean it's a nice trap is what it is but i wouldn't want it the other way yeah yeah that's

01:20:19.180 a good point um thank you so much for your time coach i just appreciate you coming today

01:20:25.080 and uh well i appreciate you having me yeah it's been fun i enjoyed visiting with you you got a

01:20:35.000 great perspective on things um and a good ability to articulate things maybe a little better than

01:20:40.880 me sometimes and i appreciate that for making some of my points but um at the same time you know

01:20:48.260 hopefully this thing that we're doing oh the documentary is great is going to help people get

01:20:54.580 sort of an inside look at um what it takes to build a program and have a better understanding of

01:21:03.060 how this whole thing got done, and hopefully it'll be something that fans can enjoy.

01:21:11.660 Were you scared at first with the documentary that it was going to involve too much of your

01:21:15.700 personal life, or did you even know what your personal life was because you've been coaching

01:21:19.640 so long? You know, I'm not big on any kind of self-promotion, so I wasn't that interested in

01:21:29.740 writing a book and i really wasn't that interested in doing this but there was so much interest

01:21:37.420 in people doing this there were like eight or nine of these whatever companies that do this

01:21:45.940 that wanted to do it and i'm kept like i don't know if i want to really do that you know what

01:21:51.980 i accomplished is what i accomplished people know what it is but this is an inside look at it

01:21:58.980 and I think it'll be interesting to people.

01:22:02.820 And I'm actually glad that we did it

01:22:04.860 because I do think it's going to be a scrapbook for the future.

01:22:09.180 It'll be a nice scrapbook for your family as well, for everyone.

01:22:11.760 There's so many people involved.

01:22:13.680 A lot.

01:22:14.580 They did a great job.

01:22:15.340 You guys did a great job.

01:22:16.480 The documentary comes out Thursday, October 8th,

01:22:19.780 5 p.m. Central on ESPN and the ESPN app.

01:22:24.200 Coach Nick Saban, thanks so much for everything, man.

01:22:26.300 Thanks for that championship at LSU too.

01:22:28.300 Appreciate you.

01:22:28.980 And, yeah, just I love getting to join you guys over at game day.

01:22:32.980 And just thanks for all the years of excitement.

01:22:35.740 It's been a good time.

01:22:36.860 Well, thank you for having me.

01:22:38.080 It's been enjoyable.

01:22:38.980 Lots of fun.

01:22:39.760 Thanks.

01:22:40.200 Yes, sir.

01:22:40.580 Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

01:22:46.440 I must be cornerstone.

01:22:51.560 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind.

01:22:56.480 I found I can feel it.

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This Past Weekend with Theo Von - October 06, 2026

#689 - Nick Saban

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