Nick Saban reveals his biggest motivating factor as head coach

Tom Rinaldi is one of the best storytellers in sports. So when he was on “Hey Coach and The Nick Saban Show” with Nick Saban this week, he, naturally, asked the Alabama coach a great question. What motivates him?

Saban’s answer was simple: Losing. And he has a great reason why he chose it as his answer.

“I think everybody has fear of failure,” Saban said. “Anybody that’s in this room. Everyone took a test when you were in school and you weren’t anxious and nervous and fearful about what the result was going to be, stand up if you’ve never experienced that. How many people you see standing up? Zero. Now, if you really, really prepared well … that anxiety wasn’t as great, right? Because you had confidence because you prepared the right way. So I think we all have a little bit of fear of failure, and that’s a motivating factor for us.

“Everybody wants to win, and what I’ve always tried to do, which keeps me away from fear of failure and it also keeps me away from thinking about winning, is staying focused on not the outcome, but what you have to do to get the outcome. That’s always been what I try to do. If you do that as a player and you do it as a competitor, you don’t have the anxiety because you’re not thinking about the outcome. You’re thinking about what you have to do to get it all the time, and it makes it a lot more fun to play.”

It’s definitely been working. Saban has only lost 24 games since taking over at Alabama in 2007 — and five of those losses came in bowl games or national title games. Alabama has one loss this year to Texas A&M, but is still the No. 2 team in the latest CFP rankings.

But fans and analysts aren’t sure Saban can avoid another loss that could come in the SEC championship game. Georgia locked up the SEC East title and the Crimson Tide are closing in on another SEC West championship. They’re the top two teams in the country, which would make it that much more interesting.

ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit’s taking the Bulldogs, though, based on his comments on The Paul Finebaum Show earlier this week.

“I don’t know if [Alabama] can climb the mountain and beat Georgia,” Herbstreit told Finebaum. “Everything that makes a great team elite, Georgia has that.”

Alabama is getting ready to take on New Mexico State this weekend.