Nick Saban details how he's currently evolving with changing landscape across college football

College football is constantly changing, and Alabama head coach Nick Saban has adapted as well as anyone. Saban and the Crimson Tide signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the country for 2023, according to the On3 Industry rankings. And Alabama has also won three of the past eight national titles.

Saban recently joined Joel Klatt on The Joel Klatt show and discussed how Alabama has continued to thrive as college football has changed.

“You have to be flexible, number one. And I think if you’re flexible then you have a willingness to adapt,” Nick Saban said. “And I think your willingness to adapt is really, really important, because things are changing. I mean just in the last 15 years… we never had RPOs before. We never had to manage throws. We never had fastball offenses like we have now. And all those things create advantages. But they also create adaptations that are necessary for the other side of the ball.”

Saban started off speaking about how college football has changed on the field, before discussing the bigger picture changes that have occurred off the field.

“Off the field… whether it’s transfer portal, whether it’s Name, Image and Likeness, whether it’s expanding the playoffs, whether it’s bowl games not being as significant as they were before and guys opting out of playing in them… so there’s a lot of changes that are ongoing that you have to adapt to,” Saban said. “And I think that rather than complain about it – which a lot of people sit around and complain. Complaining is actually a distraction to the solution. And I think you’ve gotta spend most of your time trying to figure out, ‘What is the solution? How can we adapt?’”

Saban knows what it takes, and it’s a big reason why the Crimson Tide should be College Football Playoff contenders again in 2023.

“Most of the time it comes down to if we can do a better job from a relationships standpoint and build a program that creates more value for the players, then they’re going to be happier here,” Saban said. “They’re going to want to stay here. They’re going to buy into the fact that long term I can create more value for myself by staying here in the program. That’s the way we’ve tried to look at all of these challenges to try to improve the quality of the program that we have.”