It is time for lessons on behavior, the pink-suited Nick Saban said after the first spring football A-Day Game in Tuscaloosa since 2019.
Will his players listen? Saban is not the new stand-alone record holder for national championships by a coach for nothing. He has seven. Paul Bryant has six. Everything that happens now is new history.
And also unlike anything that happened in 2020. The patterns are returning. The seasons of football are falling back in line after, hopefully, crosses fingers, the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. For inexperienced college football players, now is the season of learning what it takes to win in the fall. The pain comes in the summer.
Our annual April of Southern football rebirth meant a little more this year for teams around the Deep South, but Alabama’s 69-year-old coach wasted little time publicly celebrating spring’s return on Monday after Alabama’s scrimmage. The Crimson team won 13-10, so congrats to them. Saban at least offered that the game was “fun,” and did joke about nearly getting trampled during the scrimmage, but his real message was a simple one that he emphasized to this new collection of talent built on past dreams.
And the message was don’t do anything you might regret during the extra-long break from school that is fast approaching.
“Behavior is a habit,” Saban said, “and we want our guys to have winning habits. I think the individuals on the team make a decision of what their habits are going to be — have winning habits or losing habits. Buy into what you need to do to be a team. Play like we want and need you to play with effort, toughness. Do your job.
“So, I think that’s the time.”
Saban is always on message, and even when wearing a jacket the color of an Easter bunny. His seasonal attire was the star of A-Day, if we’re being honest, but new starting quarterback Bryce Young looked exquisite, too, when given enough time to work the passing pocket formed by a now-inexperienced offensive line.
Those important points of developmental learning will come, but the most pressing bit of business for Saban post-spring was his wisdom to players about what’s most important in this moment of the “process.” They, of course, could not learn it in 2020 because spring football was canceled and everyone was at home in quarantine with their parents. The Saban Calendar of Football now says discipline, and dedication to the team through decisions made away from school. Everyone can benefit somehow, some way by the self-discipline Saban has used to build his foundation of football success. It is built on granite. Others use sand, and now is the time of year to play in it down at the FloraBama.
The disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic are not yet over for universities and their football teams. Planned last year, there was no break this spring semester to hopefully limit the transmission of COVID-19. It is still a threat, and even to young people, and we shouldn’t need a reminder about that at this point in our hellish journey, but we do.
On a much lighter note, it was good to see Saban again in that place that he loves, surrounded by young people working together for their common goal. Dapper in his delicately crafted pink jacket with pinstripe squares and matching pink tie, Saban was on the field throughout the game, per his custom, and that almost took a turn for the worst. After a live interception, with possession changing suddenly and general chaos being expressed on the field by players wanting to impress their coach, Saban suddenly found himself in the middle of the action.
The Easter bunny was in a place he did not wish to be.
Saban cracked wise that it was the players who needed to worry, and said he was an old but resolute coach tough as a goal post.
“It shows athleticism on their part,” said Saban, joking that his players avoided him out of “respect for player safety by not running into me.”
Leadership was valued this spring and will be this summer. At center for Alabama is sixth-year senior Chris Owens, the player who came off the depth chart for the 2020 College Football Playoff after Landon Dickerson injured his knee in the SEC championship game. Saban said Owens has already “demonstrated a lot of positive leadership.”
“He is the one guy on the offensive line who has significant experience besides Evan Neal, and he plays center, which, the nature of the position really requires some leadership, and he has done a great job of that,” Saban said.
Owens will always stand as an invaluable piece of that 2020 championship team, but now he will be like a bridge to a new era. That 2020 group was like something out of a dream, and it speaks to the impact of that team on college football that Saban would, unprompted at the end of his news conference on Monday, make another point about what we all watched while closed off from each other in 2020.
Saban never looks back. The “process” does not allow for it. He did one last time at A-Day, though, thanking the 2020 team on the field, and then again afterwards to reporters (still on Zoom).
“I don’t think people really realize the disruptions that that team had to overcome and they never skipped a beat, you know?” Saban said. “They handled it better than anyone else. They continued to improve.
“It was almost like, ‘So what? What’s next?’ Whether we had a game canceled ... we had coaches not there. I was not there. It really didn’t matter. They had a great sense of purpose. We had great leadership on that team, and it’s something special. And I hope people certainly have an appreciation for that, and don’t take it for granted.”
And if anyone ever does, then there will be daily lessons on behavior.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.
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Goodman: Nick Saban delivers lessons in ‘behavior’ - AL.com
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