Nick Saban Talks Show Business, Bench Pressing and the Importance of Nothing with Pat McAfee

Alabama head football coach Nick Saban spent his normal 20-minutes on Thursday with Pat McAfee discussing his team's expectations, his friend Bill Belichick, his enjoyment of the process and much more.

Saban joins McAfee each Thursday at Noon central time and it's turned into entertaining and insightful content.

The segment opened with McAfee showing off his new Alabama jersey, a gift from Saban at the end of last week's segment, and asking the Crimson Tide head coach if he can get a national championship ring at the end of the year.

"Hey we just have to focus on winning the next game."

McAfee doubled down and asked again for a national title ring.

"You've got to do it one game at a time. You've got to focus on the next team. I think when you play games like we had last week. You want to build on that. You want the players to be emotionally excited about what they were able to accomplish in a difficult environment. Even though we had to overcome a lot of adversity, some of it we created ourselves. But you don't want to be relieved that you won because I think that creates a bad emotional state that doesn't really help you build on sort of the next game and next team that you have to play. Every team in the SEC that you play is capable of beating you. These guys almost beat LSU, they had a chance to beat Ole Miss, so this is a tough game that we have coming up and we have to have the right mindset for it."

McAfee asks Saban how he's been able to maintain his steady attitude through ups and downs of the season.

"What I think that players really need to understand. The team needs to understand it but every individual player needs to understand it. It's almost like being in show business in a way, you audition for a part and you either get the part or your don't. The next time you audition, you've got to do the same thing whether you got the part the last time or not, so whether you won the game the last time or not. In show business you're only as good as your last game, you're only as good as your last play, and that's certainly how it is in sports. If players can't keep the right mindset of what they need to do to play well all the time. Even when you're practicing, there's pro scouts out there watching practice, whatever it is. You're either creating more value for yourself by how you're going about your work, or you're not. What players don't understand is, people are looking for reasons not to pick you. When you don't do the right things, that's not going to help you increase your value. The individuals on the team make the team what it is. I want every guy on the team trying to increase his value everyday, every practice, every play and in every game. You ask me how I'm trying to keep the right mindset, or how we're trying to keep the right mindset, that's sort of how we're trying to do it."

AJ Hawk asks how to keep his players emotional excited and mentally dialed in.

"I think that's what I just talked about, we're trying to keep people looking forward. Always look forward to the next challenge. Learn from any failing that you had, learn from any positives that you had, but if you're going to stack positive performance you've got to keep looking at the future, be able to self assess in terms of what do I need to do better, what do we need to do better as a team and as an indivual so you keep improving. If you bench press 180 and your goal is to bench press 300 pounds, you don't want stop when you get to 250. You want to keep working toward that goal and keep climbing the mountain. That's what we're trying to get our players to be able to do. Outside noise is a big factor in being able to control the mindset of the team because of what they hear from other people, whether it's good or bad, how it impacts their frustration when don't do well and how it impacts their complacency when they do do well. It's human nature for all of us. You can't allow human nature to sneak in. You've got to have the special mindset to be the best. You're entitled to nothing. When you get up everyday you're entitled to nothing. You're not entitled to playing time. You're not entitled to anything. You've need to understand what you have to do to continue to try to be the best that you can be. Because that's the only thing that's. going to help you. Talent without discipline and the ability to stay focus and execute, it's not worth anything. It's nothing. These are all things that players have to understand, that coaches have to understand, everybody in the organization has to understand."

McAfee asks Saban about this coming week's early kickoff against Arkansas.

"We just try to get the players to understand that when your feet hit the ground on Saturday because it's an early game you've got to be ready to go. Your whole thought process has to change, you've got to speed it up. You don't have the same sort of routine that you normally would go to to play in an afternoon or a night game. This is really important that the players understand that so you get off to a good start in games like this. It's not a great time to be playing, but we're going to make the best of it."

Former coach Chuck Pagano asks Saban what he loves most about coaching college athletes.

"I really think coaching is teaching. Teaching is the ability to inspire learning. The thing I like most about coaching is relationships with the players, trying to teach them to help them to be a better version of themselves, whether it's personally, academically, or obviously in coaching it's athletically on the field in terms of what you can help them to do to get better. I really enjoy that. One of the most disappointing things is when you have a guy that has ability and you want him to sort of improve and take advantage of that ability that he has and the talent that God has given him and he doesn't want it as bad as you want it. That's one of the most frustrating things I think, but I just enjoy teaching, I really do."

McAfee asks Saban if he's enjoying coaching more now than earlier in his career.

"You know, I am enjoying it more. Some of that goes with the type of team that you have. The type of individual personalities that you're dealing with on the team. You've heard me talking about energy vampires before, and those guys take all your time and attention and you don't think you're able to focus your time and attention on the things that would actually get better. But I enjoy it most because of the team, the players, the relationship that we have. Each year to me is like taking a new job. You've got a new team, new leadership, new guys at new. positions and you're trying to evaluate how can we get these guys to be better. It is challenging. I enjoy the challenge of it. It is fun when you don't have maybe the expectation. I think the thing that is hardest, when everybody has this expectation that you're going to win every game by, you're using 20-points, that is hard. Sometimes you can get caught up in the expectations of it all instead of focusing on the things that you need to do to get the expectations that you want, the outcome that you want. With this year's team it's been all focused on what do we have to do to do the things we need to do to get a positive outcome. They've responded and improved and gotten better. We're not benching 300 yet, but we've come a long way from benching 180."

Hawk asks Saban about the consistent challenge of replacing assistant coaches.

"I think one of the things that I learned from Bill Belichick was he always had an astonishing group of young guys that were in the building. When I was in the Cleveland we had Scott Pioli, we had like three or four guys that became head coaches, we had three or four guys that became general managers and these guys were like go get the coffee guys when they were helping me as sort of my GAs. When you do that, and that's what I've always tried to do is have a bunch of young people, evaluate them, see them go get other jobs and know that you would hire them back because you know who they are. One of the disadvantages of having all these guys going out and getting jobs everywhere is they hire the guys before I get a chance to. Like Dan Lanning. Dan Lanning was here as a GA, he went to Memphis or someplace and got a job. I was ready to hire him and two days before I hired him, Kirby hired him. So it messes up your gameplan a little bit when you've got all these guys out there because they kind of know who the guys in your organization are who are the good ones. They end up snatching them up before you get a chance to. To answer your question, I try to keep a file on ok, here's the best coordinators, here's the best receiver coaches, here's the best DB guys, it's harder to do because the longer you're a head coach the more displaced you get from who are the best assistants. So you have kind of depend on other people and ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research on who actually are these best guys. Sometimes you look at statistics and say ok they led the nation in defense, these guys are getting 500 yards a game on offense so let me check this guy out. So it takes a lot of research to really find out. You want someone who's knowledgeable, you want someone who's a good communicator and a good teacher, but you also want someone who's a good fit with the people that you already have in the organization and that's the hardest thing to figure out when you hire people you don't know."

Boston Connor asks Saban about his press conference style and asks if he wish he would be more like Bill Belichick.

"Bill's done really well in his own right. I'm in no position to evaluate anything that he does. I do think it's different in pro ball than it is in college. In college the image of the program and you have to recruit players to come to the program so you have to have a program that's going to create value for them. So using the media as an opportunity to sell the kind of program you have, sell the things you're trying to get accomplished to create value, personally, academically and athletically I think is important. So for people to know who you are and to know what kind of teacher you are, what kind of coach you are, how you care about players. That's really, really important. If you took that approach in college it would be not so good maybe from a public perception standpoint in terms of what you have to do to recruit and enhance the value of your program."

McAfee sets up Saban to talk about his expectations for the team.

"You know, my expectations for our team are, is our team playing to our full potential. Winning or losing the game is going to be a result of that. How close are you getting to that in terms of the individual player and the team. The chemistry, the leadership, how people are playing together. Also, are they executing up to their level. All these guys want to play in the NFL someday. So if you can convince them that what they're doing is creating value for the future they're going to be more motivated to do it and that will benefit the team in the long run. So that's my whole idea about, you're auditioning every time you go on the field and you need to be at your best anytime you go on the field."

Tone Diggs asks Saban about clock management in reference to last week's game and Miami's blunder.

"Well, it depends on the situation in the game. Obviously if you need a touchdown, or you need a field goal in terms of two-minute. But you always get in situations where, like last week, we're in four minute. We're trying to take the air off out of it and we want to kneel on the ball. We actually with 1:36 in the game could have kneeled on the ball. We make a first down, we don't know if the player who caught the ball, his knee was down when he caught the ball or not. So we tried to go fast and just hand the ball off and they didn't cover the receiver so the quarterback decides to throw the ball out there. Well the running back who thought he was getting the ball hit the quarterback's arm and we stop the clock. So terrible decision. Terrible clock management. We could have knelt on the ball on that play on first down and actually ran the clock out. Somebody is in the press box who knows when we're going for two and I've got it in my pocket too. But you also know they don't have any timeouts left so how much clock can we milk by kneeling on the ball. We could have knelt on the ball, we were going to kneel on the ball after that play. We stopped the clock so now we can't kneel on the ball. Sometimes these situations and circumstances are well planned in terms of what you're trying to do, but the circumstances flip the script just like last week. Everybody's saying they might review this play hurry up and run the next play. So we try to run a fast play, we've got to be able to understand the situation so we don't do what we did. But at the same time I understand why the guy did what he did. They didn't even have a guy lined up on the receiver so he thinks he's going to throw the ball to him. But it was the wrong time to do it. We all learn from it and he'll learn from it. With seven seconds or less to go in the game. We've got fourth down, seven seconds. We run air-ball. Do you want to punt, because the only way you can lose the game is to get a punt blocked. Even though we have great specialists and we want to utilize their talent whenever we get the opportunity. We roll out, hold the ball for as long as we can and throw it for as long as we can and you time that play and it usually, if you have seven seconds, it will end the game, and that's how we ended the game last week."

McAfee asks Saban about Jalen Milroe's growth.

"I think his confidence, his relationships and understanding with his coaches of exactly what he needs to do as a player has gone way up. I think that is what has helped his performance. I mean the guy is a talented guy, he can throw the ball accurately down the field, he's a really good athlete, he can extend plays and make plays with his feet. This progression that we kind of needed for him to play quarterback has really been exponentially improving week-by-week. People thought he couldn't throw the ball and he threw for over 300 yards last week, which we knew we were going to have to do against A&M because of their front. And he did a good job of that. Continuing his development in all these areas I think is really, really important. He's been great about it. He's had a great attitude about it. I just had a meeting with him. I always meet with them at 11:30 on Thursday and go through the week with him and go through the plan with him. He's well prepared and very, sort of appreciative of how he's developing the leadership with the other guys on the team. All these things are real positives."