Coach Nick Saban Spends Little Time Celebrating National Championships
Coach Nick Saban was featured on the “Appearing on All Things Covered” podcast with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden and discussed how he shifts his focus from one season to the next.
Since 2009, coach Saban has brought home six national championships, but he spends very little time celebrating them. From the time the team gets back to the locker room, coach Saban already has his sights set on next season.
“I guess you could say it starts right then. And then it starts the next day because you have coaches leave. A coach takes the head coaching job at Texas or whatever, so you’ve gotta go back to trying to hire coaches. So you can’t stop really,” said Saban.
Every year the Crimson Tide lose players to the NFL Draft, the transfer portal and graduation. “The day after the national championship game or the day after the last game that you played, it’s like, OK, this is a new job", said Saban. "We’re gonna lose 25 percent of our team, a lot of really good players. Most of the time, the leadership on the team leaves, aight. So you have all these new challenges with people in new roles, and that’s very challenging to me".
This offseason, Alabama has lost a number of assistant coaches including, Steve Sarkisian to Texas, Charles Huff to Marshall and Charlie Strong to the Jacksonville Jaguars. In fact, Saban has lost his entire coaching staff plus the strength and conditioning coach since winning the national championship in 2017.
Underclassman Mac Jones, Patrick Surtain II, Jaylen Waddle and Christian Barmore have declared for the NFL Draft.
Coach Saban is never complacent and has been a busy man this offseason. He brought in a couple of former NFL head coaches in Bill O'Brien and Doug Marrone. Saban also reeled in the highest-ranked recruiting class ever according to 247Sports and Rivals.
In the podcast with Peterson and McFadden, coach Saban also talked about his golf game, the idea of continuing with a conference-only schedule and his coaching future.