Nick Saban

I think I’ve always been kind of geared up to always sort of look at what’s in front of you, not necessarily look what’s behind you, and I think that the next game is always the most important, the next season is always the most important, the next team, the next group of players, and there’s always a great challenge in that. I think that we sometimes use the analogy of every season is like climbing a mountain, and obviously when you get in a situation like we’re in now, both teams, it gets a little more treacherous at the top in terms of the consequences of mistakes and things that can happen.

So my question to you is, where do you want them to be? Want to condemn them to a life sentence? Or do you want a guy to have his children going to Princeton?

Make his ass quit.

Why do you continually try to get me to say something that doesn’t respect one of them? I’m not going to, so quit askin’.

Everybody hits me up for eating Little Debbies, but no one passes that cookie jar.

And they ran through our ass like shit through a tin horn, man, and we could not stop them. We could not stop them. Could not stop them.

I guess I have to say it, I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.

The more one emphasizes winning, the less he or she is able to concentrate on what actually causes success.

Some of the great leaders in history were not adored but respected. My advice to leaders: Stop trying to please everyone and do what you believe is best.

There’s two parts of leadership: You’ve got to be a good leader. You’ve got to be somebody that people want to emulate and care about the other people. But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.

Becoming a champion is not an easy process… It is done by focusing on what it takes to get there and not on getting there.

I'm tired of hearing all this talk from people who don't understand the process of hard work — like little kids in the back seat asking, 'Are we there yet' Get where you're going one mile-marker at a time.

I don’t care what you did yesterday. If you’re happy with that, you have bigger problems.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.

Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.

It’s not human nature to be great. It’s human nature to survive, to be average and do what you have to do to get by. That is normal. When you have something good happen, it’s the special people that can stay focused and keep paying attention to detail, working to get better and not being satisfied with what they have accomplished.

One thing about championship teams is that they’re resilient. No matter what is thrown at them, no matter how deep the hole, they find a way to bounce back and overcome adversity.

I think everybody should take the attitude that we’re working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do everyday, we want to be a champion.

If it was up to you, we’re six-foot under already. We’re dead and buried and gone. Gone. So, if that was the case, we’d have to get some respirators out or something down there to put life back in people.

You all just think that, whatever happens we just shit another player, everything’s going to be perfect. All of our fans think that, you all think that, that’s what you write about, that’s the message that you send out there.

Eliminate all the clutter and all of the things that are going on outside and focus on the things that you can control with how you go about and take care of your business. Take the other team out of the game and make it all about you and what you do.

I don’t think it’s about who you play, I think it’s about who you are.

We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.

You guys gave us a lot of really positive rat poison. The rat poison that you usually give us is usually fatal. But the rat poison that you put out there this week was yummy.

Mediocre people hate high achievers, and high achievers hate mediocre people.