Nick Saban likens success at Alabama to climbing the mountain

It is another year, and another SEC football Media Day is underway. And front and center for this year’s event is none other than Nick Saban. However, since he retired and vacated his position as the Alabama head coach, he is in a different capacity during this year’s media session.

Although Saban is not participating as an active coach at this year’s SEC Media Days, that didn’t stop him from sharing some insight from his time leading the Crimson Tide. While sitting down with Paul Finebaum on the Paul Finebaum Show, Saban talked about his mindset at Alabama during arguably the greatest head coaching run in college football history.

“You know, in the beginning, I’m putting the mountain up on the board and saying, ‘Ok, how do we climb this mountain successfully,’” questioned Saban. “And it gets more treacherous at the top the closer you get to the top. So you gotta overcome more; you gotta have the right sense of what you have to do to continue to be successful. But once you do that successfully, several times, you sort of become the mountain— everybody shooting at you, everybody wants to beat you, everybody’s got that game circled.”

When Saban took over the program in 2007 after a brief stint in the NFL as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Alabama was in a bit of an identity crisis as the Crimson Tide struggled to find consistency since Gene Stallings departed from the program just over 10 years prior. And it didn’t take long for him to give the program direction and poise. After finishing 2007 with a 7-6 record, Alabama would win their first of six national championships two seasons later, in 2009.

Once Saban and Alabama ascended the mountain top, they essentially became said mountain in the eyes of the rest of the college football world. College football fans will be hard-pressed to find many seasons in which the Crimson Tide did not either rank first or earn a spot in the College Football Playoff under the legendary head coach. To have that level of consistency required a level of mental fortitude. As Saban continued, he discussed how that disposition was forged and maintained.

“You have to have a different disposition on your team,” said Saban. “We started out trying to prove that we could climb the mountain now that we have to prove that, if we are the mountain, what’s our motivation to be as good as we could be without any external factor contributing to that? We have nothing to prove.

“So you have to have a different type of person, you have to have a different disposition, [and] you have to have guys that are internally motivated to be the best that they can be. They’re not motivated because of what somebody else said about them, or something that they have to prove, or some revenge that they’re trying to get for a game that they lost a year ago. Because those things don’t last, like the internal motivation of wanting to be the best player you can be, taking every challenge, and always looking to be better than you are.”

When it was all said and done in Saban’s 17-year stint at Alabama, the Crimson Tide was essentially the flagship program in college football. Although he did not end his career in Tuscaloosa with a national championship, he did ensure that what are the Crimson Tide’s biggest rivals, the Georgia Bulldogs, did not achieve a feat he was unable to do in his coaching career: winning three straight national championships. After narrowly beating Georgia in the SEC championship game, Saban and company swiped the College Football Playoff ticket and kept them out of the field of four.

According to Saban, he and his players needed a consistent mindset to tap into in order to be successful and consistently compete for national championships. And his ability to find that balance allowed him to finish off his coaching career as arguably the greatest collegiate head football coach in history.