PASADENA, Calif. — Inside a tent near the Rose Bowl, 72-year-old Nick Saban stood in front the media last week and occasionally leaned forward to better hear questions.
Is Saban past his prime?
‘I think when you get my age, everybody is waiting for you to lose a step,’ he said with a grin.
There were reasons to wonder about the future of Saban, the second-oldest head coach in college football (two months younger than North Carolina’s Mack Brown).
Of course that might sound silly now, with Alabama (12-1) set to play Michigan (13-0) on Monday in the Rose Bowl in the College Football Playoff semifinals. With Saban two victories away from an eighth national championship.
The man started coaching football 50 years ago, and apparently the secret to his ongoing success dates back even further.
‘You have to be able to adapt,’ Saban said. ‘I always say dinosaurs couldn’t adapt and they’re not around anymore.’
Nick Saban adapts to modern-day recruits
In 2010, Greg McElroy was the starting quarterback on Saban’s first national championship team at Alabama. Now he is an analyst at ESPN and marvels at the changes.
Not with Alabama’s offense, which Saban brought into the 21st Century a few years after McElroy graduated. But rather with photos on social media showing recruits wearing Crimson Tide jerseys during official visits to the school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
‘In a million years, I never would have imagined coach Saban allowing a photo shoot on an official visit for a recruit,’ McElroy said. ‘Back in the day, if you asked to put on a jersey to take pictures for your social media, he would have gone on a rant about nobody cares about your vanity. But that’s what the modern players are into, so he’s now totally cool with it.’
Saban has adapted because it’s essential for recruiting, according to McElroy, who was a redshirt freshman when Saban took over as Alabama’s head coach in 2007.
‘Back in the day, if he told us to run and jump off the closest bridge, I would say, ‘OK, when? Let’s go.’’ McElroy said. ‘The modern day player asks, ‘Why?’ And that’s OK, there’s nothing wrong with that.
‘I think you kind of have to meet the modern-day player where they are more so than you did the players of yesterday.’
Nick Saban has traits for adaptation
Curt Cignetti, the new head football coach at Indiana, said he saw Saban’s ability to adapt long before major changes even surfaced.
Cignetti was a member of Saban’s first coaching staff at Alabama. As a wide receiver coach and recruiting coordinator from 2007 to 2010, he watched Saban work his magic.
‘Adjusting to change,’ Cignetti said. ‘Managing uncertainty. Thriving in chaos. … I mean, he’s had to do it his whole life to get to where he’s been.’
From afar, Cignetti said, he sees those same traits serving Saban well as he adapts to a landscape where top recruits expect lucrative NIL deal and the transfer portal is a constant threat − and opportunity.
‘It’s chaos,’ Cignetti said. ‘A lot of variables. But he thrives in those types of situations. You’ve got to be light on your feet, you’ve got to be smart and quick thinker and a deep thinker. And he’s all of those.’
How players see Nick Saban
This season, for example, Saban has listened to members of the players’ leadership council rather than simply expect them to carry out his orders, according to McClellan.
‘He tells us stuff, then he listens to what we want from him, what we want to see,’ said McClellan, also noting changes in Saban’s coaching style this season. ‘People who know him, seeing the video clips of him being tense in practice pretty much. He hasn’t been kind of like that this year.’
It’s probably no surprise to Saban that his team has met his expectations despite the absence of more regular eruptions.
‘He jokes and stuff,’ McClellan said. ‘… I feel like he’s truly trying to connect with us.’
‘I don’t know what that secret formula is, but he’s something different,’ Milroe said, ‘and he’s separated himself from other coaches, for sure.’
What Nick Saban learned from COVID-19
Back inside that tent near the Rose Bowl stadium, Saban, ever mindful of the missing dinosaurs, was talking about adapting to a ‘constantly changing world.’
Take the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, for example.
‘I mean, when they told us on March 13th on Friday that everybody had to go home, that was supposedly our first day of spring practice, my first thing was how are we going to adapt,’ he told Dan Wolken of USA TODAY Sports.
‘So we bought everybody an Apple watch and scale and gave them a workout program and sent them home. But the fact that we did that and we stayed in touch and we had Zooms with the players, we ended up winning the national championship, and I think it was because of the way we managed all the challenges that COVID created.’
But it was about more than COVID.
‘That kind of made me realize, wow, when something comes up, you’d better be one step ahead of the problem so you can adapt to those situations,’ he said. ‘… Our players handled it well, and I told the players, I said, ‘whoever handles this disruption the best will have the best opportunity to be successful when we do play.’ They did it.’
Indeed, they did, with their old coach leading the way.