Nick Saban appreciates regional alignment of SEC

In the ever-shifting conference landscape that has dominated offseason storylines in college sports, Alabama head football coach Nick Saban is pretty content with how the SEC is configured. Currently, the league maintains a contiguous, regional membership.

Saban prefers this, and thinks the additions of Oklahoma and Texas come next season don’t alter the complexion of the league from being coalesced around the southeast. He explained his thinking during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday.

“The one thing I like about the SEC and the additions we made to the conference, it keeps us in some kind of a regional alignment. We’re not traveling all over to play. I think that’s been one of the great things about the SEC. It’s in the southeast part of the country, it’s contained there,” Saban said.

A passing reference was made to the ACC by one of the hosts. The ACC recently moved to add SMU, Stanford and Cal to the league, joining the Big Ten in having presences on both coasts.

Saban didn’t take the bait.

“I’m not saying anything about anybody but the SEC,” he said. “But I do like the fact we added two great programs, two great universities to our conference, but we didn’t change the geographic dynamics of what we do.”

Saban discussed how culture fuels his sustained success at Alabama

Saban has won seven national championships, 10 SEC titles and has won at least 10 games for 15 consecutive seasons. The 71-year-old joined The Pat McAfee Show on Friday and shared how he has been able to sustain success. It’s no surprise that Saban cited culture as the main reason.

“The number one thing… it’s culture,” Nick Saban said. “Everybody says it, but really what it’s about is having people in the organization who understand what they want to accomplish and what they want to do.”

Alabama routinely signs elite recruiting class, and Saban and his staff are as good as anybody at coaching that talent up.

Saban is also an elite motivator. He explained that a part of his strategy as far as motivating players is asking a simple question to each of his players.

“Every player that comes to Alabama, I always ask them, ‘What do you want to accomplish?’ or ‘What do you want to do?’” Saban explained. “And they say, ‘I wanna graduate. I wanna play in the NFL some day.’ So I ask them, ‘What does that entail?’ So now we define exactly a process of things that they have to do to be able to accomplish those things.”