Alabama fans love him. Love probably isn’t a strong enough word. Perhaps ‘adore’ is better. Maybe ‘worship’ is the best. With three National Championships in four years, you can understand why Alabama fans love/adore/worship their coach, Nick Saban. Outside of Alabama though, there isn’t much love for Mr. Saban. Non-Alabama fans are bitter because their team is not winning championships. Others don’t like him because they claim he’s “dirty” (just google ‘Nick Saban dirty’ and you’ll see what I’m talking about) and has shady recruiting practices. Others plainly state that he’s the anti-Christ (I won’t mention any names…). Whether he’s your favorite coach or your worst enemy, he’s a championship winning coach so he makes an interesting subject for our ongoing series of Sports & Theology.
Let’s set the scene: On Monday night, Alabama easily defeated Notre Dame in the National Championship game. The day after, a final press conference was held to talk about the season and the championship game. Below are a couple of questions and answers from the press conference:
Q. You don’t strike me as a guy that would wear four rings at a time. Do you keep any mementos? Do you wear the rings? What do you do with them?
COACH NICK SABAN: Not really. I mean, I don’t really wear any of the championship rings, never have.
You know, I think the satisfaction, enjoyment, comes from the fact that you know you did your best to be the best, you could be at what you were trying to do, and by the accomplishment itself, that’s where the self-gratification comes from. We don’t really kind of need to wear a ring and go like this so everybody says, look what I’ve got. I mean, that’s just not my style.
You know, and we appreciate what everybody in the organization did to accomplish it, and very, very proud of their commitment and effort and hard work and all that they had to overcome to accomplish it.
[…]
Q. I know this never gets old for you, but why?
COACH NICK SABAN: …if you’re going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be. Sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Like Shakespeare wrote literature. Let them put a sign up right here that says “the best street sweeper in the world lives right here.” And if you can do that, you do the best there is in life, knowing you did your best to be the best you could be, no matter what you choose to do. That’s why.
Because there’s no better feeling than knowing you did the best you could be. I don’t care if it’s what you do, what I do, what the street sweeper does. It really doesn’t matter. It’s not all about results.
Many of you are not going to like what I have to say here but*…I really appreciate what Saban says. Much of it reflects a Christian worldview of competition and sports. I don’t know if Saban is a Christian, and I’m sure he’s said things historically that don’t align with Christian values, but this is some good stuff.
As I’ve watched him over the years, he does seem to exhibit a certain detachment from winning. This is reflected in the questions about what he does with his rings. He’s certainly a driven individual and I’m sure he has a great inward desire to win but outwardly, he seems to go to great lengths to veil it. For the most part, I think this is admirable. Many a coach could learn from this approach. CJ Mahaney has said, “After a game, what a coach celebrates is what a player emulates.” When Saban talks about effort and excellence as opposed to winning, a great service has been done to his players.
And I love what he says here about street sweeping and being the best you can be. I know that these are not his original ideas–he is paraphrasing a Martin Luther King Jr. speech–nonetheless, the fact that he looks to those ideas as inspiration is encouraging. It reflects a Biblical worldview that says anything can be done for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). He’s smart to acknowledge that it’s the journey that is important not the end result. If you measure success by the outcome, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Former Pittsburgh Steelers coaching great, Chuck Noll, echoes this idea when he said, “A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.” Winning is out of our control but our effort is not.
Lastly, like him or hate him, you have have to respect Saban for what he does with his players in regards to developing their talent. Yes, he has the best recruits in the country but raw talent is not enough. You have to mold that talent and there’s perhaps no one better than Mr. Saban at doing so. In the garden, Adam and Eve were told to subdue the Earth. In essence, they were told to unearth treasure, to bring order to chaos. There is something beautiful and God-glorifying when rawness is turned into wholeness. Saban isn’t the only coach doing this but he’s mastered the craft of developing players.
I’m sure I’ll receive emails and comments telling me how horrible a person Nick Saban is after this blog post. And maybe they’re right. All I can say, for now, is that his comments at the National Championship press conference were impressive and worth thinking about.
*For the record, I am NOT an Alabama fan. I’m a Michigan fan. And sadly, during the first game of the season, I was witness to the football machine that is Alabama.
