Nick Saban says his dad had a rule when he worked at the family service station as an 11 year old that he carried into coaching, if you didn’t do the job right you did it again
“Treat people the way you want to be treated... That was number one... The second thing was accountability. We grew up with a lot of responsibility. I worked at my dad’s service station from the time I was 11 years old.”
“I don’t care what the task was, there was always a reckoning. Did you cut the grass? Did you trim? Did you sweep? Did you clean the mower? And if you didn’t do all those things right, you had to do it over.”
“I remember my dad saying to me, ‘If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find the time to do it over?’”
“Because you are going to do it over. So accountability was really important. And the last thing was, and this was probably the thing that helped me always look for the next challenge was, no matter how many games you win, it’s never good enough... I asked my mom, ‘it’s never good enough, how come?’ And she said ‘It’s not about beating the other guy, it’s about, did you play as good as you could play.’ We're you as good as you can be? As a leader, as a player, as a teammate.”
Nick Saban reveals that watching star quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, and Bryce Young spend their Saturdays building houses for Miss Terry's charity and going on to start their own foundations is his proudest moment as a coach
"The number of players, whether it was Tua, Mac Jones, Bryce, whoever it was, that I saw them working on houses for Miss Terry on a Saturday to build a house for some needy family. And now they all have foundations themselves, and they're dedicated to helping other people."
"That's one of my proudest moments as a coach, that because those guys were involved in helping people here and doing things in the community that had an impact to help someone else have a better quality of life, they chose to do that in their future."