Nick Saban and Paul "Bear" Bryant both coached six teams to National Championships, the most by any coach in the history of Division One College Football. Saban and Bryant had quite different public personas, they also have much in common.
 
Both coaches made major changes to their programs after winning multiple National Championships and did it so effectively that they won multiple National Championships after the changes were made. Their success lies in that they knew:"What To Change and What Not To Change".
 
Bryant had won National Championships in 1961,1964 and 1965 utilizing small but extremely quick players and an offense that featured a long passing game complimented by some running in the era of one platoon football.
 
After back to back 6-5 seasons in 1969 and 1970, while being overpowered by big, strong running teams, Bryant decided to completely change his program. He started recruiting linemen that were big and strong, not small and quick. He had his friend and rival Texas coach Darrell Royal, who had won National Championships in 1963,1969 and 1970, teach him his wishbone offense which featured three runners and almost no passing. In addition to Bryant going to Texas, Royal also sent his assistant coaches to Alabama to educate Bryant's staff.
 
With a totally different scheme and player profile, Bryant won three more National Championships in 1973,1978 and 1979.
 
Nick Saban won National Championships in 2003, 2009, 2011 and 2012 with teams featuring a powerful running game and a big strong defense. After losing back to back Sugar Bowls in the 2013 and 2014 seasons and giving up over 40 points to spread passing offenses in each game, Saban like Bryant, decided to overhaul his program.
 
Saban reached out to Tom Herman, who had been the offensive coordinator of the Ohio State team that had beaten Alabama 42-35 in the Sugar Bowl. Herman had become the head coach at the University of Houston. Herman and his assistant coaches tutored Saban and his staff on their spread passing offense and the best way to defend it.
 
Saban spread his offense out and threw more passes. He made his defense much quicker, although smaller, to better defend the passing game. With a new scheme and player profile, Saban won National Championships in 2015 and 2017.
 
Bryant and Saban changed their game plan and the physical profile of their players; they did not change the character, work ethic and accountability they demanded from their players. Five of Bryant's players quit the first week of practice in the new system.
 
They did not tell their players the new system would be easier or that they wouldn't have to work as hard. The expectation was that they would have to work as hard or harder, but they would be more efficient and get better results.

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?
 

​Sometimes when two people have a conversation, the person doing most of the listening takes away something completely different than the person doing most of the talking intended. This situation also occurs in a group setting because different people in the same audience may take away different ideas from the same presentation which may or may not be what the presenter intended.
 
As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. Coach Dorrance coached the Women's Soccer team at UNC for 33 years and the men's team for 13 years. In his fantastic book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, Coach Dorrance gave an example of the way different audiences respond differently to the same content.
 
"You don't need to show a videotape to a women's team to critique them. If you are in front of a group of men giving them general criticisms of a game, a videotape is crucial. If you are saying there was not enough defensive pressure in the game, every male in the room is think¬ing, "Yeah I was the only one working out there. The rest of you were useless." In his mind, he immediately blames everyone else for the lack of defensive pressure.
 
If you made that general criticism to a women's team, and said, "This is garbage. Our defensive pressure was terrible." Every woman in the room would think, "He's talking about me."
 
I find it interesting that a male will look at the video and see everyone making mistakes, including himself, and start to blame everyone else for his inability. But a woman will see herself and take full responsibility for that problem emotionally. With women, a video is more effectively used to show that they can play well and to show the positive aspects of the performance.
 
Not that you can never show negative aspects of a performance to a women's team, but seeing their mistake on tape does not really help them. If you tell them they made a mistake, they'll believe you.
 
I do not want to pretend that men do not respond to positive things, but you must have a balance of showing the positive and the neg¬ative. Coaches tend to only stop practice during an entirely negative environment to point out and correct mistakes. Yet one of the best times to stop a training session is during or right after a brilliant series of performances to confirm exactly what you want."
 
Who's in your audience?

​As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina for 33 years, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. In his in his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, he shares some great insights as to why "Complete Communication" includes more than just our words:
 
"Though trial and error, I have learned that the women I have coached listen less to what I say than to how I say it. In other words, they listen less to the language and more to the tone. If my tone is negative, it doesn't matter how positive the words are. They are going to hear negative.
 
If your body language is negative, it doesn't matter how careful you are in constructing your sentences to create a positive impression. It still comes out negative. Women listen to your tone and watch your body language, regardless of what comes out of your mouth.
 
They are discovering in research that a woman has so many other faculties in her brain that she draws on in a conversation, and these faculties are above and beyond her intellectual interpretation of the words you are using to communicate.
 
She is looking at your body language, and she is listening to your tone. Through a combination of all these factors, she is deciphering exactly what you are thinking about her regardless of what you are saying. It's crucial when you are coaching women to use the correct tone and body language to communicate, or at least have some sort of positive approach even if you are being critical.
 
If you are criticizing a woman in training — and obviously sometimes you are going to — they have to get a sense that it's nothing personal."
 
Anisha Sipporah, in this excerpt from her wonderful poem "Tone of Voice", describes the impact of "Complete Communication" as it relates to children:
 
"It's not so much what you say,
As the manner in which you say it;
It's not so much the language you use,
As the tone in which you convey it.

'Come here, ' I sharply said,
And the child cowered and wept.
'Come here, ' I said; he looked and smiled,
And straight to my lap he crept."
 
It is valuable to be mindful of your "Complete Communication" as a speaker and a listener and to be aware of the impact on the other person.
 
Are you?

As the Women's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. In his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, Coach Dorrance describes the parallels between an effective coach and an effective parent:
 
"Coaching is a lot like parenting. Parents who have produced some of the greatest kids I know, are unbelievable nags... in a positive sense. They are always reminding their kids what to do. They are constructing a behavior for their children that will eventually become natural. By insisting that they perform this way, their children become the sort of people they want them to become. But it does not happen by accident. It is because there is a constant effort by the parents to instruct.
 
Coaching and motivating players are the same way. Telling a player to get fit, for example, is not good enough. You must instruct them about the process - how often, what kind (aerobic, anaerobic, or combinations), what intensity - so they are thoroughly educated.
 
You nag them about it constantly because it will rarely be a natural inclination. You tease them about it if other methods do not work. Sometimes you are sarcastic, sometimes you are serious. Sometimes you bring them in one-on-one and talk about their wonderful potential and let them know the steps they need to take to reach it. You have to find their button because everyone is different."
 
Players who have been effectively coached can help build culture.Coach Dorrance gave this example:
 
"The culture for the women's national team is you come into training camps fit. A lot of players do not follow what the coach would like the culture to be. They follow the player's culture. They have heard the coach say, "You've got to come in fit," and they say to the other players, "He's not serious about this is he?" They hope to hear the other player say that the coach is not serious, he says that every year and nobody ever comes in fit. But what they will hear from the players on the national team is that if they do not come in fit, they are in trouble, and likely, they will struggle. The veterans tell the new players, "You come in fit. That's all there is to it." The players come in fit. That is the culture.
 
Do your team members help establish your culture?

As the women's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. Coach Dorrance and Coach Wooden had similar approaches to coaching. Coach Wooden once reminded a former player turned coach: "You haven't taught until they learned.", responding to the coach's frustration with his players inabilities to properly execute fundamentals.
 
In his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, Coach Dorrance articulated his views on Real Coaching:
 
"There is a difference between telling somebody to do something and teaching them how to do it. Telling someone to do something is what an inexperienced coach feels coaching is all about. He stands on the sideline, rants and raves, screaming: "I can't believe it. I've told you not to clear the ball into the middle. If you don't clear it high and wide, they are going to finish that chance. How many times do I have to tell you not to clear the ball in the middle?" Well, there's someone who doesn't coach.
 
If you must yell at them from the sidelines, you haven't coached them. If you have coached something into someone, guess what, they are going to do it. Coaching is about effect. Telling someone the correct way to do something is not necessarily coaching them. If the coach is spending his practice teaching session lecturing his players with how much he knows about the game, he certainly isn't coaching them to perform. Maybe the best coaches are the ones who make the game seem simple and don't complicate practice with long-winded theories on how to play."
 
Coach Wooden liked to quote legendary basketball coach John Bunn who wrote: "Don't take thirty minutes to say something you should say in thirty seconds."
 
Coach Dorrance had excellent advice for Coaches who were great players: "Their natural abilities preclude them from an understanding of the process of typical player development, making them less effective coaches. To be effective coaches, they must work harder to be patient and learn the details about the process."
 
He provided a different caution for Coaches who had not been great players. "The coaches with the lackluster soccer resumes need to temper their lectures and not feel they have to prove their knowledge."
 
Coach Dorrance and Coach Wooden were great teachers, not just talkers. They made sure their players had enough time in practice to get their needed repetitions by being clear, concise and compelling in their instruction.
 
How can you improve?