Nick Saban: The first coaching lesson he learned was the most memorable pass he threw

Gather ’round for story time, folks.

Normally when Nick Saban speaks to the media, he discusses the players that he coaches at Alabama. Well, on this week’s episode of the Hey Coach radio show, Saban was asked to remember his finest hour as a high school football player. He then recalled something his high school coach told him right before he made a game-winning pass to make the playoffs that has stuck with him in his own coaching ever since.

To find out that piece of coaching gold Nick Saban accrued from his own high school coach, travel back to 1966 — when Revolver and Pet Sounds had just hit record store shelves, and the 70-year-old Nick Saban was just 15 — for his tale of an amazing high school football comeback aided by a piece of coaching advice he still lives by.

Saban shares lasting moment from his high school football career

“Well, I’ve told this story before, but I guess I’ll tell it again. You know, when I was a sophomore quarterback (in high school), Earl Keener was my coach, and he was probably one of the most successful coaches in West Virginia football ever. And we’re playing Masontown Valley, maybe the 10th game of the season. And we lost one game. We were like 9-1 and the team we were playing had the same record. So whoever won this game got in the playoff,” Saban said.

“So we go to Masontown Valley. We walk through the graveyard from the school to get to the field. Lights are bad. In my little town, the last guy turned the lights out. Everybody went to the game. There was nobody left in town. So we go to Masontown Valley, we get behind 18-0. I mean, we’re getting our butts kicked, aight. So we go back into the locker room. Coach Keener, he never yells or anything.

“We go back out, get it to 18-12, and have the ball with 1:25 to go in the game. So we go down the field in two-minute,” Saban continued. “Now we’re 4th and 12 at the 25-yard line. He calls the last timeout. So I run over to the sideline. He asks me: ‘so what do you think?’ And I said ‘well, what I think is…YOU should call this play.’ I did not want to call this play because everybody in town is watching. Doesn’t work, it’s gonna be on me.

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“So he says, ‘Young Nicky, I don’t care what play you call. You got the fastest guy in the state playing left halfback, and you got the No. 1 receiver in the state, three-time All-State at split end. I don’t care what play you call, but one of the two of them need to get the ball.’ This is my first coaching lesson. That’s why I remember,” Saban said.

“So I run out on the field and say, ‘okay, it’s 4th and 12, why would you call a play-action pass?’ In my simple mind, at 15 years old, I called a play to fake it to one guy and throw it to the other. He caught it for a touchdown and we won the game 19-18,” Saban finished as applause erupted for his quarterbacking performance as a 15-year-old back in the mid-1960s.

Heck of a story from the Alabama coach.