When you won seven record national championships as a college head coach, your work ethic speaks for itself. Not that Nick Saban have to prove their worth to anyone, but right after the final of last month’s College Football Playoff vs. Ohio State, he had only one thing in mind – to continue to improve.
Saban’s relentless pursuit of greatness is what makes him the best college football player of all time.
“They came back from Miami on Tuesday afternoon at 4 or 5 am and had a team meeting at 7:30 am on Wednesday,” ESPN college football analyst Chris Low said during Thursday’s appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show. “And talking to some of the people at that team meeting, they said that you would never know or any idea that we had just won a national championship.
“If you want to tell a story about Nick Saban and how it’s connected, that’s it. He is constantly looking forward to the next challenge. He loves to tell the story of Michale Jordan, all the strokes he took to win. It was always the next one he got right. Saban is the same way. “
This nugget is nothing surprising. Lane Kiffin talked about the resistance of the coaches who work with Saban and how “the process” sets the standard for excellence. Saban has just completed his ninth best-ranked recruiting class in Alabama at 247Sports Composite and this is the best of all.
“Most of us are 70 and we start to slow down, but Nick gets better with age,” said Low.
Saban just finished his second season unbeaten with Crimson Tide, this time winning everything with the best attack in the country, a unit led by several All-Americans, including Heisman winner DeVonta Smith. Paul Finebaum said last month that this season was Saban’s biggest achievement, considering what college football programs were forced to endure in the midst of a pandemic.
“Well, it was an extraordinary year. I think we made adjustments every day,” said Saban last month, the morning after defeating Ohio State in the national championship game. “I think the players respond to that, the coaching staff responded in a way that allowed us, even in the game last night when we had to make adaptations to the game, Smitty falling, Metchie falling, the next guys came and played well. Really he didn’t miss a beat.
“I think the game was actually a kind of reflection of the year in terms of the extraordinary circumstances that we had and the extraordinary work that our players and the technical team did to adapt to these things, which is the ability to adapt is probably a reality key to success, especially in times like these. “
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