“When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it’s make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who’s in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you’re investing your time in that.”
― Nick Saban
“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.”
― Nick Saban
“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.”
― Nick Saban
“When you have the ability to affect other people and be somebody that somebody wants to emulate, care enough to help somebody else for their benefit, that’s what makes you a good teammate, and that’s what everybody’s looking for.”
― Nick Saban
“When people have success, one of two things happen. They either get really satisfied and want to keep thinking about it and talking about what they did, or the success becomes a little addictive, and it makes them want to keep having more.”
― Nick Saban
“We all have anxiety about things. We all have little insecurities, but eventually you have to face your fears if you want to be successful, and everybody has some fear of failure.”
― Nick Saban
“All I know is that if we play well, we control our own destiny in terms of what we do.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t think I’m complicated at all. I’m not political, and I’m not trying to be diplomatic. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, and I don’t say bad things about people. There is no agenda. There’s no trying to fool somebody.”
― Nick Saban
“Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.”
― Nick Saban
“You can blame the other guy for saying it, or you can look at yourself and say, ‘I must have contributed to this.’”
― Nick Saban
“We create a standard for how we want to do things, and everybody’s got to buy into that standard or you really can’t have any team chemistry.”
― Nick Saban
“Now, everybody always says there’s no ‘I’ in team, but there is an ‘I’ in win, because the individuals make the team what it is, and how they think and what they do is important to the team. So when you act like the individual is not important, well, it is damn important who these people are and what they are.”
― Nick Saban
“College football is the only game in the country, of any kind, that the college game is longer than the pro game.”
― Nick Saban
“I always ask myself the question, do you like to win, or do you hate to lose?”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t want people to think I’m not happy when we win – I am. But there’s a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, ‘This is it – we conquered the world.’ We didn’t. We just won a game.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t know if I’m different from everybody else, but there’s really only two things to me that are really, really important – recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.”
― Nick Saban
“Talent is talent, and everybody knows somebody who has talent or ability, but they never really converted it into a productive performance for whatever reasons.”
― Nick Saban
“One thing I always tell players is that there are three bad things: Nothing good happens after midnight, nothing good happens when you’re around guns unless you’re going hunting, and you don’t want to mess around with women that you don’t know because a lot of times, bad things happen.”
― Nick Saban
“When you play quarterback, you have to process information quickly, get the ball out of your hand to the right guy.”
― Nick Saban
“Honesty and integrity is an important part of our character, my character.”
― Nick Saban
“One of these days when I’m finished coaching at Alabama, I’ll write an authorized book because there’s only one expert on my life, and guess who that is… me. And there won’t be any misinformation. There won’t be any false statements. There won’t be any hearsay. There won’t be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.”
― Nick Saban
“Teachers are always trying to inspire people to do better, to learn, to grow. That’s what we do, and we’re proud of the success we’ve had here doing that, and it’s something we’ll certainly continue to do.”
― Nick Saban
“Everybody thinks when I say a guy is a good game manager, that’s a negative, but I think it’s a real positive. You have the ball in your hand every time when you’re a quarterback. Whether you’re handing it off or throwing to somebody, I think that’s extremely important.”
― Nick Saban
“When you have a system, you kind of get in a routine of what’s important. And then you spend a lot more time on thinking of things that would make it better.”
― Nick Saban
“I feel like I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.”
― Nick Saban
“First of all, you’ve got to have a vision of ‘What kind of program do I want to have?’ Then you’ve got to have a plan to implement it. Then you’ve got to set the example that you want, develop the principles and values that are important, and get people to buy into it.”
― Nick Saban
“I think when you win the national championship, it works throughout your team. Where human nature is to say, I did well. I got my quota this month. Now do I get some time off? Do I get a bonus? Do I get to go on a cruise? But it’s not to keep trying to be the best. That’s not necessarily human nature.”
― Nick Saban
“My wife goes to Birmingham five times a week. My mom lives in Birmingham now after moving from Myrtle Beach. It’s not just the job. A lot of people don’t get that. My life is here.”
― Nick Saban
“I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.”
― Nick Saban
“My wife gets so mad at me because I don’t like to cook on the grill.”
― Nick Saban
“I guess I’m motivated by the fear of failure to some degree and knowing what can happen when you don’t do things the way you need to do them to have success.”
― Nick Saban
“I just want everybody to know that I’m opposed to an unauthorized biography on anybody.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t ever want the players to relax in a game.”
― Nick Saban
“You wear your team out, and it’s hard to get them back.”
― Nick Saban
“If I were a high school coach, I would put my best players on offense. The best athletes on my team, I would give them the ball and score points. I wouldn’t play them on defense. I would play them where they can get the ball and score points.”
― Nick Saban
“You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It’s hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football. You can’t keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren’t always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.”
― Nick Saban
“It’s been our goal as a program to always give our players the best opportunity to be successful, whether it’s personally, academically, or athletically.”
― Nick Saban
“I think anytime you play somebody on a yearly basis, you develop a history for what they like to do.”
― Nick Saban
“I try to stay out of the spotlight.”
― Nick Saban
“Steph Curry is special in terms of the kind of competitor he is.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t control what people say. I don’t control what people put on dot-com or anything else.”
― Nick Saban
“It’s never OK to lose a game.”
― Nick Saban
“It’s great to see our players get some of their dreams come true.”
― Nick Saban
“I think center is a critical position.”
― Nick Saban
“I think people always assume that every team has great intangibles, and that’s not necessarily right.”
― Nick Saban
“Probably the number one position that has the greatest number of players to choose from is receiver. When we’re out there recruiting, there are a lot of receivers out there to recruit. It’s harder to find defensive players.”
― Nick Saban
“One of the easiest shots in golf is chipping. It should be the easiest. It’s like throwing a ball or pitching pennies. It’s easy. And I struggle with that, and the struggle is all mental.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t know that there’s any particular scientific evidence that you could say, more guys get hurt in this offense versus that one, or hurry-up, or whatever, but everything that we’ve ever done in the NCAA is about exposure. How many exposures does a player get?”
― Nick Saban
“Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don’t know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.”
― Nick Saban
“I think I’m pretty misunderstood, because I’m not just about football.”
― Nick Saban
“What makes Freddy Krueger such a horrible character? What makes him scare you to death? You can’t get rid of the guy. He never goes away.”
― Nick Saban
“I certainly like to win. But I really hate to lose. So when you think about that, you’re always motivated to, ‘I don’t want to lose the next game. I don’t want to lose the next game.’”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t believe you name a starter until the starter wins the team.”
― Nick Saban
“I think there’s a certain pride people have in competition.”
― Nick Saban
“There’s certain things that I was taught growing up about not quitting and seeing things through. I think if I would have come home and told my dad that I was going to quit the team, I think he would have kicked me out of the house. I don’t think I’d have a place to stay.”
― Nick Saban
“I think a lot of times you have to face your fears. I think everybody has to face their fears.”
― Nick Saban
“You can’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.”
― Nick Saban
“If I say I like one person, that means everybody that voted for the other person doesn’t like me. So, why would I do that?”
― Nick Saban
“I want what’s best for our country. I’m not sure I can figure that out.”
― Nick Saban
“I want what’s best for people who want to improve the quality of their life. I hope whoever our leader is will do all that he can do to make our country safe and improve the quality of life for a lot of the people we have in our country, and I don’t think I am qualified to determine who that should be.”
― Nick Saban
“There needs to be somebody that looks out for what’s best for the game, not what’s best for the Big 10 or what’s best for the SEC or what’s best for Jim Harbaugh, but what’s best for the game of college football – the integrity of the game, the coaches, the players, and the people that play it.”
― Nick Saban
“There needs to be a college football commissioner.”
― Nick Saban
“When I talk about a successful program, define that. It’s not just winning the national championship every year because nobody can do that.”
― Nick Saban
“I loved it at LSU.”
― Nick Saban
“I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn’t seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.”
― Nick Saban
“Mick Jagger can sing. Mick Jagger is a great entertainer.”
― Nick Saban
“I never want to discontinue giving kids opportunities.”
― Nick Saban
“If you’re a coach, you’re a teacher.”
― Nick Saban
“I think you have to be more flexible to be a pro coach because once you pay the guy the money, whether he can backpedal the way you want him to or whatever, his style of play may not suit you, but you still are going to play him, and he is going to be a part of your team.”
― Nick Saban
“The thing I like about college football so much is you can affect these guys a lot more when they are 18-22, 23 years old in terms of people and having a chance to be more successful. They are still a value type development, where you have a chance to help them mature a bit and help them be a little more successful in life.”
― Nick Saban
“I think the worst thing a player can do is just not be yourself.”
― Nick Saban
“Our players get scrutinized pretty hard at Alabama.”
― Nick Saban
“Rex Ryan does a lot of the same kind of stuff that we do in terms of how they play in the secondary and what they do.”
― Nick Saban
“As a coach, when it comes to football players, we’re trying to change their behavior and make them better. As people, we’re trying to change their behavior and make them better.”
― Nick Saban
“I’ve had a lot more success helping guys then just being punitive.”
― Nick Saban
“You get excited about getting married, aight, but after you’re married for awhile, you gotta have a process to make it work, aight.”
― Nick Saban
“Bill Belichick was probably the most organized coach that I’ve ever been involved with.”
― Nick Saban
“We played in a number of these neutral site games, I would call them, whether it’s a playoff game, a bowl game, or one of these kickoff classic type things, which I think is helpful to, you know, our players in terms of playing some place that’s not really a home game for them.”
― Nick Saban
“George Perles at Michigan State was the first coach that gave me responsibility as far as being a coordinator. I learned a lot from that experience.”
― Nick Saban
“If we’d had Drew Brees, I might still be in Miami.”
― Nick Saban
“Once you get good, you need a total disposition about staying good.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t try to sensationalize anybody. I’m not trying to entertain. I’m trying to give information and give access to me and tell about our program.”
― Nick Saban
“The way I look at it is, if you don’t want somebody to know something, don’t say it. If you don’t want them to see you do something, don’t do it.”
― Nick Saban
“I think people who grow up in one particular environment, like the Alabama-Auburn game, they don’t ever get the same appreciation for the Ohio State-Michigan game or the Michigan State-Notre Dame game or the Michigan-Michigan State game, the Browns and the Steelers.”
― Nick Saban
“I said as soon as we had a playoff, we were going to minimize the importance of all the other bowl games. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; it kind of is what it is.”
― Nick Saban
“We don’t have rules that people can’t use Twitter. We just want people to be responsible. We certainly don’t want them to do anything that’s going to affect themselves in an adverse way or affect our program, our university, or our team in an adverse way.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t Twitter. I don’t text for those very reasons. I don’t want anything to be misinterpreted. I would encourage our guys not to do that.”
― Nick Saban
“It’s a free country. I know we have a lot of regulations in the world right now in what we can and can’t do. I would rather our people be responsible and not have to be regulated.”
― Nick Saban
“I played so long ago, I don’t think anybody even knew you could transfer. I don’t think they knew anything about it.”
― Nick Saban
“People talk about you won four national championships. Well, I feel like we’ve had good enough teams to win eight. So I feel like we failed four times. I feel like I failed four times.”
― Nick Saban
“Golf is a great example to me. Golf is a metaphor of life. I mean, every shot. You have this beautiful hole, this beautiful opportunity to get a good score.”
― Nick Saban
“I don’t know how many times I’ve been 114 yards from the hole and made double bogey. Well, I hit a great drive, but it doesn’t matter. It’s only the next shot that matters.”
― Nick Saban
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