Nick Saban, the Head Football Coach at Alabama, has coached six teams to National Championships. Coach Saban has said his biggest influence was his father. Saban grew up in Monongah, a coal mining town in West Virginia of about 1500 residents.
 
In an interview, from The Big Book Of Saban compiled by Alex Kirby, Coach Saban described how his father taught him the fundamentals of life, he has used to shape the football program at Alabama and influence the lives of his players:
 
"I had great parents. I was extremely fortunate growing up, My Dad had a service station and a little Dairy Queen restaurant, and I started working at that service station when I was 11 years old pumping gas. But in those days‑‑ notice I said it was a service station; it wasn't a self‑serve. So, you cleaned the windows, checked the oil, checked the tires, collected the money, gave the change, treated the customers in a certain way. We also greased cars, washed cars.
 
The biggest thing that I learned and started to learn at 11 years old was how important it was to do things correctly. There was a standard of excellence, a perfection. If we washed a car, and I hated the navy blue and black cars, because when you wiped them off, the streaks were hard to get out, and if there were any streaks when he came, you had to do it over. We learned a lot about work ethic. We learned a lot about having compassion for other people and respecting other people, and we learned about the importance of doing things correctly."
 
The core mission of Alabama Football is to serve the players in a manner that makes them better people and teaches them to help others. Coach Saban explained how this core value came from his father:
 
"My dad was a coach, but he never went to college. But he coached Pop Warner, American Legion baseball, He started out, bought a school bus. We had seven coal mining towns in the county. He would go in each coal mining town, up a hollow somewhere, pick the kids up, take them to practice. Took these country kids that didn't have an opportunity to play, taught them how to be successful, how to compete. The work ethic he taught, the standard of excellence, the integrity that you do things with, the attitude that you carry with you and the character that you carry with you, what you do every day. That certainly is something that has stuck with me."
 
Just as his father taught the youngsters in the coal mining towns of West Virginia, Coach Saban teaches his players at Alabama. The world is a little better place because of Coach Saban and his father.
 
Who are you teaching?

Nick Saban, the Head Football Coach at Alabama, has coached six teams to National Championships, winning his first in 2003 at LSU.
 
In an interview, from The Big Book Of Saban, compiled by Alex Kirby, Coach Saban discussed how a different approach is helpful in motivating today's players:
 
"It's an instant coffee, instant tea, instant self-gratification culture. Everything is on the Internet. Everything is a picture. Everything is fast. Everything is quick. There is not the same long-term commitment to something and sticking with it and learning from your mistakes.

I think with a lot of players right now, you must use a little different approach. But I think that at the end of the day they all want to be good. They all want to reach their full potential. And they all have a willingness that if you can help them do that, they have a respect for you, and they will give you everything they can to do it.
 
I think, first of all, you have to have the respect of the audience, so you have to have the respect of the players, which I think you get by them knowing that you have their best interest in mind and helping them develop a career off the field as well as athletically.
 
Our Mission Statement has always been to create an atmosphere and environment for players to be successful first as people.
 
We have a personal development aspect to our program that there's principles and values in the organization relative to developing a successful philosophy, creating the right kind of habits, thoughts, habits and priorities that are going to help you make good decisions, whether it's the Pacific Institute for Leadership Development coming in, whether it's a peer intervention program that address behavioral issues, drugs, alcohol, gambling, spiritual development, how to treat other genders; we spend a lot of time trying to develop personalities on our team, characteristics that will help them be more successful, be more successful in life."
 
Alabama football players are committed to hard work and constant improvement because their Coach demonstrates by his actions that he is more interested in helping them achieve success as people than as just football players.
 
What do you demonstrate to your team members by your actions?
 

​Nick Saban, the Head Football Coach at Alabama, has coached six teams to National Championships, winning his first in 2003 at LSU.
 
The tipping point for Coach Saban occurred in 1998 when he was coaching at Michigan State, because of the influence of his friend, Psychiatry Professor Lonny Rosen. Saban already had a legendary work ethic and attention to detail, but in 1998 in the week leading up to the Ohio State Game, Rosen sold him on a new mental approach which is now referred to as "The Process".
 
In an interview with the Lansing State Journal in 2003, Rosen explained some of his views on athletes and performance. "Motivation itself generally lasts about two plays—it's highly overrated. Give me a team that has a business-like attitude, a team that can deal with adversity when it comes. The most destructive phenomenon in sports is relief. It's typically followed by a decrease in performance."
 
In his book, The Making of a Coach, Monte Burke recounted the new approach Saban and Rosen agreed upon: "The Spartans, and their coach, would, starting in practice that week, take it one step at a time. Each player would focus on his individual responsibility. Rosen emphasized that the average play in the football game lasted about seven seconds. The players would concentrate only on winning those seconds, take a rest between plays, then do it all over again. There would be no focus at all on the scoreboard or on the end result."
 
Coach Saban recounted the importance of that week:
 
"There's probably one really memorable game that changed the whole dynamics of the psychological approach we use to motivate teams, and it happened when we played at Ohio State in 1998.They had been #1 all the way through, and we were 4-5 and not a very good team. We decided to use the approach that we are not going to focus on the outcome. We were just going to focus on the process of what it took to play the best football you could play – which was to focus on that particular play as if it had a history and life of its own.
 
Don't look at the scoreboard, don't look at any external factors, just put all your focus and all your concentration, all your effort, all your toughness, all your discipline to execute that play. Regardless of what happened on that play, success or failure, you would move on to the next play and have the same focus to do that on the next play, and you'd then do that for 60 minutes in a game and then you'd be able to live with the results, regardless of what those results were."
 
Michigan State was behind 29-9 with ten minutes to go in the third quarter. Undeterred, they came back and won 28-24. "The Process" was born.
 
What's your process?