Nick Saban reveals his secret to avoiding outside noise, criticism from fans, media

The topic of expectations in college football became a big one last week when Clemson coach Dabo Swinney responded vigorously to some criticism and outside noise from a fan on his call-in show.

Swinney was adamant that some fans don’t appreciate enough how hard winning truly is.

One coach who would know a thing or two about that is Alabama coach Nick Saban. Saban was asked about Swinney’s comments on Wednesday and how he handles the burden of expectations at Alabama.

“I didn’t really hear what he had to say so I can’t really comment on it, but the way I try to manage it is focus on the game that we’re playing, trying to get our team prepared to play the best that they can play,” Saban said. “Don’t listen to the noise outside, whether it’s good noise, bad noise, rat poison, whatever. Try to keep our teams focused on the task at hand as well as you can, have this go both ways.

“When you have success sometimes you get complacent. When you get criticized it’s frustrating, but best thing I’ve found to do is not listen to it either way and stay focused on what’s in front of you.”

Swinney certainly didn’t take that approach last week when he responded to Tyler from Spartanburg and the outside noise he created. But he did raise more awareness to the often insane expectations some programs face.

It’s hard to win every game. It’s even harder to be expected to win every game.

Clemson is obviously having a tough time living up to those expectations this year, having lost four games for the first time since the 2011 season. Alabama, on the other hand, continues chugging along, a winning juggernaut.

Saban revealed that he often leans on his staff to help form his critical opinions of the program, rather than the outside noise.

“I think that’s what you count on for your staff and the people who work in the organization, whether it’s how you try to psychologically prepare your guys to play to the standard that they need to play to to create value for themselves as well as value for our team,” Saban said. “And also all the coaches on the staff and individual players that you need to talk to on occasion to keep them focused. That’s a full-time job, so outside noise to me is; whether it creates expectation or is criticism is really insignificant.

“I don’t know what some guy that puts on the Internet that’s sitting in his basement all day with nothing else to do, I don’t know what that means to us.”

Whether he saw Swinney’s comments or not, that sounds like a pretty savvy answer from Saban on handling the outside noise.