In roughly one month, Nick Saban could win his fourth NCAA college football championship. This is a big deal for a lot of reasons, all mainly to do with sports. He’s well prepared for this moment.
And thus is the Tao of Nick Saban, because nearly everything revolves around football and preparing for football games.
There will be many stories and columns written over the next 30 days, on Alabama’s current dynasty, which is playing for its third national title in four years. There will be stories about the rebirth of Notre Dame, puns about waking up the echoes (I’ve used a few myself), about how Brian Kelly stands become the next in a long line of famous Notre Dame coaches who have won a national title in their third year at the school.
But nothing is more fascinating than the blank, devoid nature of Nicholas Lou Saban.
He’s won 158 games and three national championships (one at LSU in 2003, two at Alabama, in 2009 and again last season). He wins bowl games, conference championships and it could be argued, he started the SEC’s run of dominance with that 2003 LSU team.
Saban is notoriously famous for ducking questions. Any and all questions. Questions about his team, his opponents, his coaching style, recruiting practices and most notably, his emotions.
He rarely smiles, even when hoisting crystal footballs. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying life or football very much.
That’s somewhat troubling for a man who’s at the top of his profession.
Perhaps because he fundamentally believes he can control and manipulate the actions of 19-22 year-old college students, he is obsessed with micromanagement. After the 32-28 victory over Georgia in the SEC Championship that secured the Tide’s bid to the BCS title game, Saban was meticulously breaking down the failure of his players to run the defense called that was designed to stop Georgia from getting out of bounds and ending the game.
Everything Saban does is by design and when it does not go to plan, it’s upsetting to him. He wants to prepare to control. But control is an illusion, especially on a football field with 22 individuals who are reading and calculating in real time. Things don’t always go according to the plan.
And not going according to the plan is exactly how Notre Dame, as an underdog, can beat Alabama. The can prepare to be unprepared. Because it’s the only thing that can beat a calculated robot like Nick Saban.
Surprise him. Create spontaneity.
Miles, aka, the Mad Hatter, drives Saban nuts with his random ideas, fake punts, fake field goals and general zaniness. Only two teams have beaten Alabama over the past two seasons – LSU and Texas A&M. LSU did it by being flat-out crazy, with Miles calling the shots. Texas A&M did it with a quarterback, Johnny Manziel, who largely improvised once plays broke down.
You have to understand how essential preparation is to Saban. And how it’s drilled into his players, how his teams review minute details of every play call, snap count. This is a credit to their obsessive-compulsive head coach. Saban prepares to be prepared.
So when A&M ran their plays, Alabama reacted appropriately, right up to the point of finality. It looked like everyone was covered. It looked like the quarterback was sacked, or had no release valve or fifth option. Then Manziel went off the page and created something.
Same with LSU. It could be 4th-and-30 and Les Miles will run a fake punt option pitch. The least likely play is what Les likes. Especially against Saban, because Miles knows he probably didn’t spend a ton of prep time with his players on the least likely option, therefore it has the best chance to succeed.
And Georgia tried it in the SEC title game. With just seconds remaining and no timeouts, instead of spiking the ball to stop the clock and set something up, Georgia ran a play. They came up short and ran out of time. They didn’t even run the play (a fade to the back of the end zone) the way they wanted to. If they had, they would have won.
“Our players need to learn and execute things,” Saban said. “Like I told them, the most important thing in this game was to execute the plan.”
Had they called the timeout, they might have won, too. But the odds were long. Another 30 seconds for Saban and his assistants to run through the catalog of information in their brains about what Georgia’s top four plays are in that situation. Scanning all information, Alabama would have narrowed it down, ran that right play and most likely, the game would have ended with a sack or an interception or something.
This is why it probably eats at Saban that he failed with the Miami Dolphins. There wasn’t enough stability and too much spontaneity.
In his two years in South Florida, Saban’s teams were 9-7 in 2005 and 6-10 in 2006. It’s important to note how he ran the team as opposed to how they performed. He ran it like he did and would a college program. Except these are grown men. They are professionals.
Saban also elected to pass on signing Drew Brees, because of uncertainty over the torn labrum in his shoulder. He traded for Daunte Culpepper instead. Ironically, Culpepper was the one who never recovered from injury (his knee), leading the Dolphins to start 2006 at 1-6.
It was his only losing season. He couldn’t plan for Culpepper’s failure. He spent weeks assuring fans and Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga that he was staying. On Jan. 3, 2007, he was gone. For 8 years and $32 million to Alabama.
Saban likes the safety net of college football. He knows what he is and he knows what he’s dealing with. Not many coaches will out prepare him, if any. And he’s got the talent (and their attention, due to their age and the stature of the program).
The only time you really hear him complain is about the BCS (when it’s not going Alabama’s way) because it’s unpredictable. Oh, and that he doesn’t like Chip Kelly’s offense and the speed of games now, because it’s not good for players to go at that speed.
No, Nick. It’s not traditional. It’s hard to completely prepare for. That’s why he doesn’t like it. It makes Saban uncomfortable to be out of his element, to have something out of his realm of control.
There’s nothing wrong with this mind you. It makes for a highly successful college football coach. He produces quality talent, wins, good NFL players. It’s a solid-product in sublime packaging. It works. But it doesn’t emote. It doesn’t inspire. It’s not entirely creative and ground breaking.
And while there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s highly un-entertaining. Saban is bland, boring and frankly, kind of creepy with his obsessive attention to preparation. There’s not a lot of depth there, it would appear. Saban thinks about preparing for football games and little else. He may have charities, he may have a great heart for children and his faith, but he’s not here to change the way we think about football, to invent something new.
Saban’s purpose is to execute the plan that was prepared.
Now, the king of preparation has 40 days to prepare for a bland offensive Notre Dame team and a defense that probably, despite their high ranking, has some holes a great football mind like Saban can find.
For Notre Dame, to win this battle is to not play that game. Notre Dame must do something different, something unpreparable (yes, that’s a new word, for those scoring grammar at home). Something…Miles-esque. Manziel-like.
So for all that you’re about to read, see and hear about Alabama, Notre Dame, traditions, defenses, Brian Kelly and the Irish, national championships and whatever other buzzwords are hard pressed into our subconscious before the BCS National Championship, remember this: Nick Saban will have his team prepared for what is most likely to occur.
Nick Saban won’t go back to the NFL. He can’t be happy. And the pressure of winning at Alabama means there’s no joy to it anymore, not with the expectations so big each week. So his life and his coaching career are intrinsically linked to this feeling of an elevated notion of unhappiness due to expected success. The success isn’t a surprise because it’s so thoroughly prepared for.
But with sports, and life, it’s the unexpected, the roller coaster moments that make us actually feel alive.
If you spend all of your time preparing and things go exactly as planned, it’s a life lived.
But is it living life?
Either way, it can’t be much fun, which is something you can’t prepare for.
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