Nick Saban reveals advice for Kalen DeBoer as Alabama head coach

Ahead of the 2024 college football season, former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban shared his advice for the team’s new head coach, Kalen DeBoer.

Saban explained on The Triple Option that the pressure is mostly going to be internal. At the same time, outside noise is real and something that needs to be managed by DeBoer, particularly as the team deals with social media.

“The biggest thing, Urban [Meyer] coached at Ohio State, it’s no different there,” Nick Saban said. “When you coach at these programs that have high expectations, which is what we all want — there’s nothing wrong with that — but I think the number one thing you’ve got to do is be who you are. Focus on the things that are in front of you and don’t get impacted by external factors.”

That ability to focus internally and shut out outside noise is particularly important in the age of social media.

“Everybody says there’s a lot of pressure. We all put more pressure on ourselves than anybody in the media, fans, or anybody else’s expectations could ever put on us,” Saban said.

“And I think that’s a little more difficult to do in this day and age because of social media. You know, social media is a great thing in terms of creating interest in athletics, but when players start to believe what they read on the internet, that sometimes can affect their psychological disposition of how they approach what they do, whether they get frustrated, whether they’re disappointed, they’re overconfident, whether they’re complacent. I mean, there’s all kinds of impacts you can have from worrying what other people think rather than controlling what you can control.”

Throughout the course of his career, Nick Saban has often talked about rat poison. There’s even different kinds of rat poison that Saban has battled his team taking, including both praise and criticism.

Nick Saban addresses changes, challenges in college football throughout career

Throughout his career, Nick Saban saw plenty of changes in college football. Part of what made him great was his ability to address them.

“The last five years, we’ve passed a lot of legislation relative to college football that has really made it more difficult to spend time with your current team. Even though it’s necessary right now to spend time with your current team because you got to recruit all the players on your team because basically, they’re free agents twice a year,” Saban said.

“I think the biggest change was when they changed the recruiting calendar to allow spring and summer visits. Those were almost sacred times. We had spring recruiting but when spring recruiting was over, you had a lot of time to spend with your team. Especially throughout the summer. Even though you weren’t allowed to go out there and coach them, you could spend a lot of time with them.”