An Ode to the GOAT
Everyone has different leadership styles. We can try to emulate others. Ultimately, it’s your genuine self that gets people to resonate.
For myself, the word that comes to mind is “Autonomy.” I don’t like the feeling of being a controlling dictator. I prefer striving towards giving someone an end goal and maybe nudging them along the way but giving them room to act authentically. It takes time to develop a collaborative team like that. Eventually people feel comfortable and everyone feels open to sharing their ideas.
Or, as I like to think of it, the Tom Izzo style.
In 1995 at Michigan State when Izzo was hired to coach basketball, Nick Saban was also brought in to coach the football team.
Two different leadership styles resulted in two hall-of-fame, successful, and culturally respected coaches.
For Izzo, it is normal to see his players and him yelling at each other on the bench during a game. An outsider might think anarchy is happening, but it’s a controlled chaos within the unit for a coach that’s never had a losing season. At the core, the players and students know Izzo loves them and will do what’s best for them. Izzo is Michigan State.
That same core message applies to Nick Saban in Tuscaloosa (See: leading the Racial Injustice Rally in 2020 in Alabama which led to his daughter getting online death threats), except when you think of Nick Saban there’s one three-word phrase that comes to mind, “Do your job.” I can really only remember one instance of infighting on the field during an Alabama game. Alabama was up 42-14 on Notre Dame in the 4th quarter with seven minutes to go in the 2012 championship when QB AJ McCarron called timeout and yelled at Center Barrett Jones (video). Jones shoved McCarron because he’s like twice as big and it ended in a hug. The players wanted to be excellent, too.
It’s easier for us to emulate Izzo’s style because generally people are flawed, and people and plans change often. It’s more tangible and allows us to be flexible (or, the buzzword I hate in project management, agile [*goes to throw up*]). Group thinking and culture are integral to organizational and personal life successes. They shape our identities.
What makes Nick Saban the greatest college football coach of all time is that he ran everything with an iron fist to success for as long as he did. What we saw for 16 seasons and six championships at Alabama will never be done again, especially with the NIL, transfer portal, and expanded playoff format.
In your own daily life, you could only tolerate that type of leadership for so long. There are many case studies or examples of that style causing toxic environments with high turnover rates.
In the case of Alabama football, high school and college transfer players came seeking it. They knew what the results would be. If they did their job to the best of their ability on every play, they would be a starter for the team, they would likely win a lot of games, they would get exposure at a national level, and a career in the pros would be waiting for them at the end. I joke but am about 80% serious that in 2024, an All-Alabama NFL and Saban coaching tree team would go undefeated and cause the 1972 Miami Dolphins to stop popping bottles of champagne every year. You can review that potential 2024 roster here.
Chicago Bears (and mysteriously not fired amongst the January 2024 flurry) Head Coach Matt Eberflus was on the Pardon My Take podcast last year when he was asked about playing for Nick Saban at Toledo in 1990 (Instagram link). The clip is a vintage description of the coach. In short Eberflus shares an anecdote about Saban’s attention to detail starting from day one of winter conditioning (which led 8 Toledo scholarship players to quit) to reminding his players in Spring practice to not lose focus on the next play after making a good one.
There were many of these moments. One time I can remember in particular was being with my friend Joel at Bryant-Denny Stadium for an Alabama home game against Arkansas in October 2017. If you look at the box score, Alabama won the game 41-9, was up 17-0 in the first eight minutes of the game, and Arkansas did not move the ball at all in the first half. It was pretty ho-hum for that time. You were watching the game, it was a fun, clear blue-sky day in the fall with friends, but really the best part of the game was watching Saban get furious at a player for what seemed like no particular reason at all to the general public. You knew something went wrong. Like being up 42-14 on Notre Dame with seven minutes to go from a title, and yelling at the referee because McCarron called timeout and instead Alabama was assessed with a delay of game penalty.
For every game, you did that. A play would finish and your eyes would gravitate towards Saban to see his reaction. His impatience was funny at times and cathartic for others. It was like this blessing for a fanbase to experience where everyone trusted this man’s plan, and how often can you say that? No one was better than Saban, and you wouldn't even dare think so sitting on your couch watching on TV at home. You could let go and it all came down to execution. If everything went well, it would end in a championship, and only then would Saban celebrate or smile.
To see him celebrate was a joy in itself. It felt earned. This is a man that could be dumped with a Gatorade bath and ever so slightly break a smirk, almost like he had to show a moment of joy even though he was still focused on execution for all 60 minutes of gametime. This is a man who, after beating Georgia to win the 2017 national championship on a 2nd and 26 dime in overtime by QB Tua Tagovailoa to WR DeVonta Smith, went up to Tua and had the following locker room interaction:
Saban “What were you thinking? Why did you take the sack [on first down]?”
Tua, thinking it was a good time to crack a joke after winning the title “We needed more room to throw the ball, coach.”
Saban “That’s not funny.”
As current Cornerback Terrian Arnold said when you’re about to get a talking to from coach, “You just have to not hear how he’s saying it, but you have to hear what he’s saying… When you choose to come here, you never know when he can chew you out. And like people say, you should be worried when he’s not saying something.”
Easily one of the best Saban moments was ending the 2011 season by beating LSU 21-0 in the championship. LSU struggled to make it past midfield all game. RB Trent Richardson ran it in for the final score with 4:36 to go and the celebration was on. And it was even moreso on because the players gave their coach a Gatorade bath and he was loving it (A+ choppy YouTube link lol). It felt like one of the happiest days of his life. If he was that happy, so were you.
I remember where I was for all of the Alabama championships. It’s a testament to his consistent greatness that the places in Birmingham I went to on the night of the 21-0 LSU game no longer exist (RIP Level Two and that Five Points pizza place I can no longer remember the name of). It’s been years since I talked to the friend I was hanging out with that night. Life happens. Really, a lot has happened in all our lives during Saban’s tenure with the Crimson Tide.
One thing was for certain. Whether you were a fan or not, you knew you were experiencing greatness in real time. The University certainly knew it while it was happening. Has an active coach or anyone ever had a statue erected of them a few years in like Alabama did for Saban in 2011 on the Walk of Champions? If you were a fan, what a ride it was. All those memories and happy moments given to us by one man that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. How can you be anything but grateful and thankful?
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To tie it back to leadership styles, how people respond to someone leaving says a lot about the person departing. Surely we’ve all celebrated a bad boss being fired and been saddened by a great one leaving.
Nick Saban had one more lesson in execution for us on the way out of Tuscaloosa: Respect.
In this day and age of access journalism, everyone is competing to break a story before it’s ready. We all figure bits and pieces out. Something could be half-baked but it needs to get out, and if it’s not truthful then whoops my bad here’s another breaking story sorry for ruining your reputation or ending (See: Tom Brady, Andrew Luck, etc.).
Except, that didn’t happen with Saban. He went out on his own accord. For a man so impatient who also could've coached at Alabama until he died, it’s easy to see in retrospect that he felt it was right. That some people close to him like Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart had a feeling.
And no one else knew until January 10th, 2024.
Going into this season, you truly wondered how many more of these seasons were left? It’s what made losing to Michigan hurt that much more.
On the 10th, he talked to his wife at 3:55 PM about what speech he should give to the team. Miss Terry, always the equal partner and queen to the empire, let him know that she would support him no matter whether they did it for another year or if he retired. At 4 PM, he walked in and told his team he was retiring. In his heart, if he couldn’t commit to the level of excellence and high standards he expected of himself, it was time to walk away.
He walked away giving us one of his finest coaching seasons ever, leaving us wanting more, thinking that if he ran it back in 2024 with the same team that Alabama would again be a preseason #1 ranking and a heavy contender for potentially the seventh championship in 17 years.
So yeah, on Tuesday the 11th, amidst all the rumors of who would be his replacement (shoutout to everyone online tracking private charter flights), Saban returned to Tuscaloosa to go to work. He won’t be yelling at players from the sidelines anymore, but the University of Alabama will always have an office at Bryant-Denny for him and he’s allowed to use it whenever he pleases while he works on figuring out what the rest of his life will be like.
On that same afternoon, Alabama Alumni and ESPN/ABC Anchor Rece Davis sat down with Saban for a 25-minute interview (Link). For almost 24 hours after the announcement, it felt like something was wrong because a Crimson Tide football moment happened and Coach wasn’t there to be a calming voice of reason afterwards. And in a way, it was somewhat comforting when we finally did get to hear from him.
As always, there are many nuggets to choose from. This answer is the one I’ll take away.
Rece Davis: It’s been a surreal couple day of sports with you retiring, Bill Belichick who you’re close to parting ways with the Patriots, Pete Carroll… but particularly Belichick with the relationship that the two of you have and the parallel successes that you’ve had. What’s your thought about the future of long-term coaching icons being able to stay in a place for a long time and sustain success?
Nick Saban: Well, I think it’s a tribute because I think it’s much more difficult to sustain success than it is to build a program, to take a 3-8 team and in 3 or 4 years and make it a successful program. I think to do it for a long time, because people don’t react well to success, they react much better to failure. They’re more willing to change their ways, they’re more willing to develop the habits they need to develop to be successful. But, when you’ve climbed the mountain successfully several times, you become the mountain. So therefore, everybody’s shooting at you, everybody wants to beat you, everybody circles that game on their schedule as ‘This is the game we want to make sure we’re ready for and win.’ So, now you have to have people in your organization who are not trying to prove anything. They’re actually trying to be the best that they can be. That’s a much more difficult thing to try to accomplish on a consistent basis.
Thanks for everything, Coach.