Alabama Athletics
5 Interesting Things Nick Saban Said Over the Weekend
The Easter holiday was tough on Nick Saban.
He usually makes sure everyone in the football program, from the coaches down to the players, get a little extra down time over the weekend. The Sabans consider it family time, but that obviously didn't quite happen this spring.
Neither did a lot of other things due to the coronavirus pandemic, like A-Day on Saturday. Instead of being on the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium, Saban was on the Alabama Athletics Spring Update Show on the Crimson Tide Radio Network.
In addition to raving about new additions David Ballou and Dr. Matt Rhea, who were hired as the Director of Sports Performance and the Director of Performance Science, respectively, right before American sports shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Saban touched upon a number of different subjects including the following:
1] Saban has been staying busy
“I’m a level-one employee. I think there’s about three of those in whole Mal Moore building, so there’s about three of us that actually come in here. But I come in every day until noon, and we have a Zoom at 7:30 in the morning with the staff and kind of organize what we’re going to do for that day. Most of it has been threefold: A) we work on next year’s opponents. B) we have an hour-long session Monday-Thursday with our players, so we organize what we’re going to do in that. And then we’re constantly working on recruiting evaluations and organization of who’s going to talk to what recruits, and I do a lot of Zoom video conferences with recruits and their families, mostly late in the afternoon and early evenings. It stays pretty busy through the week. On the weekends, of course, we don’t have anything, so we’ve been kind of staying at home and trying to stay safe. But the normal day is busy, which I still enjoy, and you just have staff meetings on Zoom. It’s not with everybody sitting in the room.”
2] Saban's been sitting in on the long-distance film sessions with players
“Their attention has been good. We always check on their well-being, their families’ well-being, and then we’re also very cognizant of academics, have a good plan for every player and make sure they do their stuff in a timely fashion. And then we probably spend about 55 minutes of that on organized install. We’ve probably been doing this now for 10 or 12 days and we’re probably somewhere between Day 4 and Day 5 of what we’d do in spring practice because we take everything really, really slow, show a lot of examples, show a lot of teaching progression examples from practice and things like that.
"It’s really been good. The players have been really, really good. We actually had a team meeting on Zoom yesterday with me. I sit in a different meeting every day so I can kind of see the different players at every position because you don’t see them every day. I think they look forward to it. I think it keeps them connected and I think it gives them something to look forward to. We try to emphasize with the players that routine is really important in something like this. When are you doing your schoolwork? When are you working out? When are you having your 2 o’clock Zoom position meeting? And they’ve been good. It’s worked out as well as can be expected.”
3] Football can't return until a testing protocol is in place
"Player safety’s got to be the No. 1 issue, especially in the environment that we’re in right now. To be able to have some kind of testing program in place and protocol for even if we were able to come back, this is not just going to go away completely. That would be the No. 1 priority to have a protocol in place so that everybody could stay safe.
"Secondly, we’re not really typically allowed to work with the players on the field in the summertime. Strength and conditioning coaches can do strength and conditioning-type programs. But now, of course, the NCAA and other people will have to determine what they will allow us to do, but if we were allowed to do something I’ve been eight years in the NFL — working in shorts and T-shirts you can get a lot of stuff done in terms of teaching, whether it’s technique, seven-on-seven. You can do a lot of things, you can teach a lot of football, and I think if fall camp’s coming up in August it’s not a time to be clanging people around with pads and helmets and tackling and all that. So our goal would be to be able to systematically teach our systems to our players and the techniques that go with it minus the contact.”
4] Saban disappointed to be missing NFL draft
Saban noted that he always gets excited for his players and "I think we have maybe four or five guys who might get drafted in the first round, and I’m hopeful that they all do.”
The coach usually tries to to attend to support his former players, but obviously can't this year.
"It is what it is. I hate it myself because I really like to share that moment with the players and their families. It brings back a lot of memories for me of when I see their family, I’m saying, ‘Hey, it just seemed like yesterday we were having a home visit trying to convince you to come to Alabama, and now you’re here ready to get drafted.’ But those relationships are something that make it special in coaching, and not to be able to share some of those things is going to be a little more difficult. But we’ll certainly be there in spirit, and I think all the players know that.”
5] Prior to spring practices cancelled, the Crimson Tide was off to a good start
"We were disappointed in some of the outcomes that we got last year, but we also had a lot of adversity to overcome and I think those are probably good lessons for a lot of people on our team and in our organization to grow and develop from. We got a lot of good young players that we were looking forward to seeing develop in spring practice, and hopefully we’ll get the opportunity for that to happen here in the summer and in the fall. We’re excited about it, and I will say that this team was on track to doing things really, really well. The offseason program went really well, academics went really well. This was probably the fewest number of points, which certainly points to an accountability and discipline factor off the field where people do the right things, that usually carries over on the field. So, we were excited about that.
“We’ll just continue to do the best we can in the circumstance that we’re in, and if people continue to do what they’re supposed to do and not do the things that they’re not supposed to do, which is discipline — and it’s a discipline that you have to have that becomes a part of your character because you have to do it when nobody’s looking over your shoulder. You’ve kind of got to do it on your own in the situation that we’re in right now. I think you end up coming out better at the other end, and the teams that do that probably will emerge and have a chance to be more successful.”
