Nick Saban explains Alabama's approach to preparing for College Football Playoff, Michigan

Nobody has had more time on task preparing for the College Football Playoff than Alabama head coach Nick Saban, who is leading his team into a nation-leading eighth CFP. Saban shared some of the tricks and methods he’s picked up over the years on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday.

A younger Saban would try to mix in specific prep for the opponent immediately during bowl practice, he said. But in the last decade, he’s learned having some patience on prepping for the specific opponent — No. 1 Michigan in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, in this instance — bears fruit.

“Really I think the first game is the most important, because there’s always a different — how many days you have between games. And this year it’s a seven-day turnaround. But initially when I was younger as a head coach, I think we would probably try to practice our way to the game, which meant we had intermittent practices while we were recruiting and all that. And what I’ve kind of learned through the years is the best way to do it is, have players work out, have no sort of technical practice type things. And then when you start to practice, practice and get ready for the game. So we’ll have seven practices before Christmas, take three days off, have a regular week when we get to California. And then we’ve got a seven-day turnaround this time,” Saban said.

He did caution, though, that the tight turnaround from the semifinals to the national championship, should Alabama win the semifinal, could be troublesome. He’s also hopeful for better results than the last time Alabama played out west in the CFP, getting thumped by Clemson in the 2018 title game.

While they won’t have a tight turnaround before going to California this time, Saban would like to avoid another face plant out west.

“When we played Clemson, we played Oklahoma in Miami, I think in 2018, and then we played Clemson out there, it was really tough. It was like a nine-day turnaround, but to get back from Miami, to be in Tuscaloosa for three or four days, to fly to California, so we learned a lot from that,” Saban said. “And hopefully we’ll do a little bit of a better job of getting ready for this game flying to the west coast than we did for that one, because we didn’t play very well in that game.”