Nick Saban Coaching Tree Members Fill College Football Playoff Semifinals

There's a bit of irony in the way the College Football Playoff has panned out so far.

All four semifinal coaches –– Indiana's Curt Cignetti, Oregon's Dan Lanning, Miami's Mario Cristobal and Ole Miss' Pete Golding –– were once Alabama assistant coaches under Nick Saban. Meanwhile, Alabama's season is over after second-year coach Kalen DeBoer's team was dismantled 38-3 by Indiana in the Rose Bowl.

That sets up semifinal matchups between No. 6 Ole Miss and No. 10 Miami in the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday in Glendale, Ariz., followed by No. 1 Indiana versus No. 5 Oregon in the Peach Bowl on Friday in Atlanta, Ga. In the lead-up to those games, all four coaches discussed the impact of working under Saban, a seven-time national champion coach. Here's what they said.

Curt Cignetti

(Alabama recruiting coordinator, wide receivers coach, 2007-11)

"I think everybody learned a lot from Nick," Cignetti said. "He was a great mentor, very organized, detailed, had a plan for everything. Managed, led, how to stop complacency, game day, recruiting, recruiting evaluation, player evaluation. I mean, he had it all. And if you were serious about your career and wanted to be a head coach one day, you took great notes or great mental notes."

"So I felt like after one year with coach Saban, that I had learned more about how to run a program than maybe I did the previous 27 as an assistant coach, and stayed with him for three more years. So there’s a lot of disciples out there doing well, and that’s why he’s the greatest of all time.”

Dan Lanning

(Alabama graduate assistant, 2015)

"In my time, I was working at Sam Houston State before I went to Alabama and was going to take a pay cut to go be a [graduate assistant] there," Lanning said. "And when anybody asked me why, I said, I'm going to get my doctorate in football. And that's what I feel like working for coach Saban, just like coach [Cignetti] said, you learn so much."

"Things I thought I knew, I realized I didn’t know anything. And I got to really carry that over with the opportunity to work with coach [Kirby] Smart, who built off of that as well at Georgia. And that was an unbelievable experience for me, and obviously it shows here as we enter the semifinals."

Mario Cristobal

(Alabama assistant head coach, offensive line coach, recruiting coordinator, 2013-16)

"The time at Alabama, the best thing, if I could just put my finger on one thing that I value the most in terms of learning, was really reconfirming what I learned under coach [Jimmy] Johnson and coach [Dennis] Erickson, the guys that I had a chance to play for here, is that under no circumstances can you allow human nature and complacency to take over yourself and the people in your program," Cristobal said.

"And that’s at all costs and that’s a daily fight. When you wake up, that’s got to be like opponent number one, that you have to attack with intent, with urgency. And I would say that would be the most important thing. There’s so many other things that were learned. Obviously, extremely grateful for time spent there, the opportunity given to me there."

"It opened my eyes to what college football had grown into, what it had become, the resources necessary, the level of recruiting required, the staffing and personnel and organizational charts in the calendar year. But all that is fine. It still comes down to the people and the mentality. And I”ll say that that was the number one thing that I will always just keep at the top of the priority charts as it relates to our program.”

Pete Golding

(Alabama defensive coordinator, inside linebackers coach, 2018-22)

"I think number one, when you learn from coach Saban, you better go out and recruit really good players," Golding said. "And so I think they’ve done that pretty consistently on both sides of the football. I think you see size, speed, which always is kind of a coach Saban thing, big people beat up little people."

"And so, I think especially out front on both sides of the ball, I think you see that physicality and the toughness component, especially with Mario being an offensive line guy by nature. I think they do a really good job on the front, so on both sides of the ball. And then there’s a discipline component that coach Saban always lived by that I think a lot of times, they’re not going to beat themselves and don’t make undisciplined penalties and all that and play sound football. And you’re going to have to beat them; they’re not going to beat themselves. I think you can see a lot of that."

"And I think most people who went through and were fortunate enough to be around coach Saban understand, number one, life blood of the program is recruiting. And then you’ve got to have sound schemes on both sides. You want to keep stability within those schemes for the development of players. And there’s a toughness component, a competitive character component to hold these guys accountable and hold them to a high standard. And I think that’s pretty consistent with whoever is playing right now.”

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