Nick Saban believes Texas, Oklahoma will not enjoy being unfamiliar with SEC foes

Texas and Oklahoma are the newcomers in the SEC this year, and there aren’t likely to be many warm welcomes. Then again, that’s just the price of admission for big-brand conference interlopers, and something former SEC head coach Nick Saban thinks unfamiliar foes will be a thorn in the side of the Sooners and Longhorns all season.

Saban explained on College Football Live on Tuesday how the lack of familiarity with conference opponents will be a challenge for the newcomers. After years of playing Big 12 foes, the new slate of SEC opponents will be known, but not intimately so for Oklahoma and Texas.

“I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned about the new teams coming into the league is the teams that have been in the league have played each other as common opponents,” Saban said. “And I think it’s a huge advantage, as a coach, if you play teams year in and year out. Because you sort of get a better feel for them, you have a better idea of what their tendencies are, you have a better idea of their players, their strengths and weaknesses. So, Oklahoma and Texas, they’re not going to enjoy that.”

Further, Saban had a specific concern for how the Sooners will fare in the rough and tumble SEC.

“But I think the biggest thing for Oklahoma is the physicality of the SEC week in and week out and how they’re going to be able to sustain that through the course of the season,” Saban said.

Saban shared how he’d use the media to feed a message to his players

Saban wasn’t shy during his tenure as the Alabama head coach in calling out what he deemed “rat poison” in the media, i.e. praiseful coverage of the Crimson Tide that could lull them into a false sense of security. But the head coach wasn’t just using his team meetings and practices for his counter-messaging campaign.

Speaking with Paul Finebaum on The Paul Finebaum Show on Tuesday at SEC Media Days, Saban explained that he’d readily push his own messaging to his team via his press conferences and various appearances, such as his weekly radio show. Whenever there was a chance to sharpen the mindset of his players, he was going to take it.

“Yeah I used the media a lot to message my team,” Saban said. “I’m figuring that you all are putting out a lot of rat poison, so I was going to put out my own sort of remedy to squelch the rat poison as well as try to send a message to the team in terms of the way I wanted them to be thinking about the season.”

Finebaum likened Saban’s messaging machinations to a game of chess, the head coach making moves to counter the various breakdowns in the psychological defenses he built up for his team.

And that psychological edge, Saban said, goes a long way into keeping the success coming. But it’s easier said than done to find the right balance between confidence and hunger to prove oneself.

“I think the psychological disposition is hard to get perfect, but that’s what you’re trying to do,” Saban said. “Sometimes you have a young team, maybe they have a lot of anxiety, maybe they’re not very confident, so you need to approach them one way. Then another year, you have a very mature team, lots of experience, lots of guys coming back, good leadership, lot of maturity on your team, so you’re going to approach them a little differently. So it just depends on what you’re dealing with and every team’s different.”