Nick Saban discusses the challenge of external factors on Alabama

Alabama coach Nick Saban knows the challenge everybody faces with external factors in today’s day and age. Whether it’s social media or anything else, there are a plethora of distractions for college football players across the country. For Saban, he wants to focus on putting everything into preparation and not allowing those external factors to distract his team.

“I think that’s the biggest challenge that we all have,” Saban said. “Because in this day and age, I think external factors which you refer to as noise, I referred to it as rat poison before, does have an impact and effect on how people think, how players think, what they think they need to do to respect what it takes to win a game in preparation as well as emotionally ready to play when they get there — to have the right intensity to sustain and perform well.”

Saban noted that having good leadership and holding each other accountable is the best way to combat these external factors.

“So this is very tricky and challenging,” Saban said. “I think making players aware of it, having good leadership on your team that can identify eternally when certain players are not all-in to be what they need to be doing to play well. And it comes down to accountability.

“Everybody needs to be accountable to do their job. Everyone needs to be accountable to each other. I think that’s a really critical factor internally to be able to sustain the kind of performance and not be affected by external factors.”

This isn’t the first time Saban has talked about external factors, distractions

A couple of weeks ago, Saban had similar comments about external factors that can distract players. Saban said that “everybody’s on their phone,” and that can become an issue on a football team.

“I don’t know if we have a great enough body of work to this point to know if these changes, to what degree do they really impact players,” Saban said. “I think players get affected. Some players I should say, get affected way more than I would like by external factors. Whether it’s media, what’s written, what’s said. Because these guys, everybody’s always on their phone. I mean if you walk around campus, it’s not just the players. It’s everybody. People running into trees because they’re looking at their phone.”

Alabama comes in at No. 2 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings. With many doubting if Alabama deserves that spot, there are plenty of opportunities for players to be distracted by what is being written. Saban will look to avoid those distractions in the final month of the season. The Crimson Tide will host LSU Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET.