Nick Saban explains how he battles on what kind of message to send to his team

Every college football head coach needs to rely on psychology to shape and influence their teams in the proper fashion. The smart ones know how to cater and adjust their managerial styles to fit the needs and demands of the different players and personalities on their roster. While that might be easy to say on paper, putting that into motion is always going to be a challenge. Few college football coaches have utilized psychology the way Nick Saban has over the years with the Alabama Crimson Tide in building one of the greatest dynasties in sports history.

On Thursday evening on the Hey Coach & The Nick Saban Show, Saban went in-depth on human psychology and the different types of messaging that have been delivered to his team over the years.

“Well, I think that, you know, we’re all trying to impact and affect human behavior. Individually, collectively, on your team. And the individuals on your team kind of make the team what it is. So there’s individual messaging that you try to get across to impact players. To help them improve and create more value for themselves and to help the team. But you also have a message that the entire team needs to, sort of, have a reason to motivate themselves to be able to play a specific game or whatever. And it’s really, really hard,” Saban said.

“So, I’ve been here for however many years (16 years). So how many of these games have we played and how many speeches have I had to give? And most of the time it’s on Monday and Friday that I give these speeches. So, that’s twice a week for all these games. So, it’s kind of hard. You’re almost saying the same thing. You’re trying to emphasize the same thing. You’re trying to find different ways to get it across to the players. Where, you know, one message may impact a third of the group. Another would impact another third. And you’re just trying to be able to get everybody on the team to be able to resonate on what you’re trying to say,” Saban continued.

“So, to have people who have experience in impacting and affecting human behavior is really, really important. It’s helped me as a coach. It’s helped me deal with individual players. It’s helped me to have a better way to message two players with new ideas in terms of things you want to emphasize. I mean, basically in any sport, it comes down to your ability to execute with consistency. Now, we could talk about a hundred things that impact that,” Saban continued.

“But part of it is your mindset. I mean, for all of us in this room. Like I said, look in the mirror. I mean, what’s your mindset every day relative to what you want to accomplish and what you want to do. And how much discipline do you have to see that through every day. I mean, we all could say that. Well, it’s no different for players. Just because they have athletic ability to play at Alabama, doesn’t mean they’re any different from you and me and anybody else in terms of what is their mindset to try to be and accomplish what they can accomplish,” the legendary Alabama football coach said.

“So you know, basically, we all have human condition. Which the human condition is to survive. Okay, so we just want to be comfortable. And we’re kind of taught that and our society teaches us that. Like, you know, we tell a guy if you sell 10 cars this month, you get to go to the Bahamas. Well, he’s not gonna go sell 20. He’s gonna sell 10, go and sit in his chair and eat some Tostitos and drink beer. And say, I won a trip to the Bahamas. He’s not gonna try to win the championship and sell more cars than anybody ever sold. That’s normal. Okay, that’s normal,” Saban explained.

“If we have our football players thinking like that, we’re not gonna win very many games. But they still are human. They still have the human condition. They want to do what they have to do to get by. So, our challenge is, to get them from here to now. How can we get you to be the best that you can be. So, I call that the capability gap. Aight. What are you capable of doing versus what are you really doing and what are you accomplishing. And what do you need to do it?” the Crimson Tide head coach said.

“But people think that just because somebody has talent and ability, they have this championship attitude to be the best that they can be. And that’s not always the case. There’s lot of people that have ability that need to learn how to challenge themselves to be the best that they can be. And in our case, and one of the things that we fight, you know, quite a bit. Because there’s a lot of social media. A lot of these kids now get a lot of their positive and self-gratification from external factors. And we’re kind of geared that way,” Saban continued.

“So, to try to get them to be intrinsically motivated. And they’ve always been better than everybody else. So, there’s never been this sense of urgency that they need to do things and pay attention to detail and do the little things right. So, to change that mindset. I mean, having people that understand human behavior and direct. We have these people talk to the players. We have them interview every player. And they tell us how we need to coach a guy so that we may be able to get into them at that point a little more quickly, because of his personality type or whatever,” the legendary head coach said.

“So, if you have an obsessive-compulsive personality guy, who really is a driven perfectionist. Everything’s gotta be a certain way in his room, but that’s the way that he plays and that’s the way he does things. You’ve gotta coach that guy different than some guy who has all kind of ability and is casual, you know, about everything that he does. You know and just kind of almost lazy in terms of his effort and his ability to perform,” Saban said.

“So, those two guys need to be treated entirely different. They have a different mindset. But they need to be coached differently. So, if you don’t have somebody who is an expert in human behavior trying to help you through all of that. I’m not smart enough, I promise you, I’m not smart enough. And nobody, probably where I came from in West Virginia is smart enough to be able to figure all of that out. Aight. So, that’s something that has been very, very helpful to us over the years,” Saban explained.