🏈 The interesting questions Coach K asked Saban in radio interview

[1CrimsonTider]

Arguably two of the best coaches of this era in college sports spent 20 minutes of satellite radio airtime Thursday talking shop.

Nick Saban appeared on Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s SiriusXM show “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K” and the 2020 Crimson Tide football season dominated the conversation.

Krzyzewski, a five-time national champion and former United States national team coach, clearly had ample respect for Saban’s seventh championship run. The questions reflected the admiration Krzyzewski had for Saban’s success and his path to breaking Bear Bryant’s record for title teams.

“You almost scored every time you had the dang ball,” Krzyzewski said setting up his first question. “Was that the best offense you’ve had since you’ve been to Alabama?”

Saban, who might not have been as receptive to such a question from another source, said the group was “very, very dynamic” without assigning a ranking.

Krzyzewski then asked about how Saban builds leadership with such a massive organization compared to Duke basketball.

“Yours is like a business,” Krzyzewski said. “It’s like running a corporation.”

It went on from there.

“You look really fresh and happy on the sidelines,” Krzyzewski said. “I tell my wife ‘How the hell does that happen? That guy is getting older just like me and he looks better now …’ Is it just being with that unit? What else are you doing, man to stay that fresh?”

Saban said he “lives in a constant state of tension” during the season and went on to discuss aspects of his now-famous “process.”

Krzyzewski also wanted to know about the three biggest stars from the Alabama season -- Najee Harris, DeVonta Smith and Mac Jones.

Noting Harris’ footwork, the Duke coach said he “should go on Dancing with the Stars.” Krzyzewski was taken by Jones’ poise on the field and accuracy with his passing.

And with the Heisman winner, Smith, Krzyzewski was fascinated with his skill-to-body mass ratio.

“How do you recruit … he had to be the skinny receiver right?” Krzyzewski asked.

“He was 159 pounds in high school,” Saban responded.

Krzyzewski was intrigued.

“So what do you see,” Krzyzewski said, “like what did you guys see in him at that level and how he produced because he obviously won the Heisman Trophy and hands down he was the top player in the country?”

Saban responded by repeating Smith’s weight as a high school recruit.

“We typically look at size and speed as a part of the criteria for recruiting a guy at every position,” he said. “And we were obviously concerned, not only did he weigh 159 pounds, but he was also very slight of build. But we had him in camp and the guy had tremendous hands. He was fast. He could come out of a break. All the other factors were really high end and on top of that, he was a great person. … I said this is just the kind of guy we want in our program. If we’re going to take a chance on a guy being able to gain a little weight, getting a little bigger and stronger, this is the kind of guy we want to do it with.”

Smith was the No. 62 overall recruit in the 247Sports composite and joined the star-studded 2017 signing class that also included Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs.

Krzyzewski went on to call Saban “the greatest coach in the history of the game of football” and wanted to know more about how he kept that continuity alive with coaches and players coming and going.

Saban responded by talking about the culture that remains a constant, using a Julio Jones story as an example. The Atlanta Falcons star was out on the practice field watching current players during 7-on-7 one recent summer when a receiver lost his cool after dropping a pass.

“That’s not what we do here,” Saban said Jones told him he said a decade after playing his final game in Tuscaloosa.

They concluded by trading compliments. Saban told Krzyzewski that he’s always looked to him as an example for how to run a program and handle certain situations.

The Duke coach thanked him with a laugh.

“Thank you for being kind,” Krzyzewski said with a laugh, “especially during this season. This has been a challenging year in every way.

Duke has a 6-5 record and is unranked for the first time since 2016 after reaching No. 6 early in the season.

“Basketball and Beyond with Coach K” airs Thursdays at 5 p.m. CT on SiriusXM channel 84.

 

[alabama mike]

I listened to the interview on my way to work this morning and found it very interesting. Two coaching legends talking shop. If you get a chance be sure to listen to the interview.

 

[It Takes Eleven]

Here is the full transcript of the interview. Very good read.


Alabama football coach Nick Saban on Thursday appeared on Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s SiriusXM radio show, Basketball and Beyond, and the two legendary sports figures discussed a variety of topics. Below is a transcript of their full conversation.

Coach K: “It’s an honor to have you on. I loved watching your team. I always like watching your team, and I watch you and your staff interact and how you put the whole thing together. But this team was a lot of fun to watch. I mean, that offense -- it’s not like your defense is shabby. But that offense, you almost scored every time you had the damn ball. Was that the best offense that you’ve had since you’ve been at Alabama?”

Saban: “Well, I’ll tell ya, this was a fun team to coach. I don’t know if it was disruptions of this season that brought everybody closer together and actually made us a better team, had better team togetherness, everybody buying into doing the things that they needed to do. We had really good leadership on this team. But the offense was very, very dynamic. I actually thought that when we lost Waddle about halfway through the season it would be the equivalent of losing an Allen Iverson, a guy that could score a lot of points because he affected the defense in so many ways. But it was interesting to see how other guys just stepped up and picked up, and Smitty had a great year, the quarterback had a great year. We had good balance on offense, and they were really fun to watch.”

Coach K: “When you talk about leadership, you’re recognized as one of the great leaders, not just in sport but in our country and a great ambassador for your sport. How do you develop leadership in such a huge unit? I mean, for me, I’ve got 12-14 guys and four coaches. Your’s is like a business. It’s like running a corporation. How do you get that leadership to flow through at every level of your organization?”
Saban: “We spend a lot of time trying to develop leadership in the organization, and we don’t really wait until guys get to be seniors. We’re trying to do this the day that guys get here and develop it throughout the organization. And then what I try to do is we look, as a staff, at every position -- whether it’s O-line, running back, DBs, defensive line, whatever it might be -- and try to pick the guy to be on the leadership group that is sort of the alpha dog in that group. But it’s also sort of the guys look at it like a status to be on the leadership team, and I say, ‘This is not a status. This is a responsibility. And it’s something that you have to earn by you setting a good example, you being somebody that somebody can emulate, you caring enough about other people to help them for their benefit. Not your benefit but their benefit.
“And this is a responsibility that you have to earn, and not just on the football field but as a person in terms of the kind of character that you have, the example that you set in doing the right things academically and then the example that you set on the field.’ And we were very fortunate this year that we had a really, really good leadership group, and I think they impact and affect everybody in a positive way. Now, you can pick guys that can actually be negative leaders that provide negative leadership that sort of complain about everything. ‘Why are we practicing like this?’ I mean, we didn’t have any of that on this team, and it really made it fun to coach these guys.”

Coach K: “I’ve watched you and your team a lot, and you looked fresh -- not that you look tired all the time. But you looked really fresh and happy on the sidelines. I was even telling my wife, ‘How the hell does that happen? That guy’s getting older just like me, and he looks better now.’ Is it just being with that type of unit, or what else are you doing, man, to stay that fresh?
Saban: “Well, I’ll tell ya, you know this, and maybe some people don’t realize it, but when we’re coaching, especially during the season, you sort of live in this constant state of tension (laughs) … and sometimes it’s tough to overcome, and the thing that I try to do is just stay focused on how can we impact -- like I always say so what, what’s next? Just every day, how can we improve how we help the players have a chance to be successful, coach them. I always say outcomes are a distraction. Can we stay focused on what we need to do to get the outcome with the players, with the coaches? Whether you win or lose -- I know it has consequences for all of us -- but really, internally on your team, you can win and still need to improve on certain things, and you can lose and still have plenty to improve upon.

“Sometimes, I say the worst thing that can happen to your team is you play poorly and win because people seem to respond better when things don’t go well. So, when things are going well and you’re sitting up there saying, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta improve on this, this, this and this,’ they’re looking at you like, ‘Hey, coach. We just won this game. What’s up with you?’ in terms of pointing all these things out that we need to do better. But I think that there’s a calming effect in all that that you minimize some of the tension because you’re not as focused on the outcome but more what do we have to do to get the outcome, and it actually makes it a little more fun, takes away some of the tension. And we even ask our guys to compete in the same way. There’s no scoreboard, play the next play and just try to dominate your box, and it’s a lot more fun that way.”

Coach K: “Your guys have incredible focus, and speaking of a few of your guys, your running back (Najee) Harris, he should go on Dancing with the Stars. I’ve watched football so closely, and his footwork before he hits the line or even after he hits the first salvo is unbelievable. Is that something that he developed? What a great back, amazing footwork that that kid has.”
Saban: “I think that Najee actually developed that, but he had great aspirations and goals for what he wanted to accomplish as a player and he respected the critical eye because there was a time -- he’s a bigger back, and he was more of a bounce-out runner. But that really wasn’t the style that he needed to be. It would be the equivalent of having a power forward that thinks he should be shooting 3-point shots all the time, aight. So, we had to get him to develop how you press the hole, you help the blockers and then when the hole’s there, you burst through the hole because he has great power, he’s hard to tackle, he can avoid people. And he really wanted to try to develop the style that would be most beneficial to him and his future in creating value for himself. He really bought into it, worked hard at it, and I think he was good last year. I think he was outstanding this year.”

Coach K: “Yeah, he was fun to watch. And obviously, your Heisman Trophy winner was fun to watch. Is he OK? I know he got hurt there in the game. He put up numbers for two games in a half, but… How do you recruit -- he had to be like this skinny receiver. What did you guys see in him at that level? And then how he produced because obviously he won that Heisman Trophy, and hands down, he was the top player in the country.”
Saban: “Smitty weighed 159 pounds in high school, and typically, we look at size and speed as a part of the criteria for recruiting a guy at every position. And obviously we were concerned about, not only did he weigh 159 pounds, he was also very slight-built, even though he had good length. But we had him in camp and the guy had tremendous hands. He was fast. He could come out of a break. All the other factors were really high-end. And on top of that, he was a great person, great work ethic, very disciplined in the way he did everything. I said this is just the kind of guy that we want in our program. If we’re gonna take a chance on a guy being able to gain a little weight, getting a little bigger and stronger, this is the kind of guy we want to do it with. He was a great player when he was a freshman, sophomore and all the way through, and he decided to come back for his senior year because he thought getting bigger and stronger would help him. I think he’s a great example of a guy that may have got picked in the second round if he had came out early, probably made $6-8 million and now he’s probably gonna be a top-five pick and make $30 million. He really benefited from it, but he did it because he approached it the right way, worked hard and did all the things that he needed to do to improve.”


Coach K: “You know what he also did? He made so many great plays, and after making them, he acted like, ‘Well, that’s what I’m supposed to do.’ Instead of making a big thing of it, it’s, ‘No, I can do that a lot.’ And that’s not alive and well right now in sport. I love his humility and his confidence that he could do it. You’ve been kind enough to be on our show a number of times, and a few years ago when we talked about college football. You made a great emphasis about the speed of defensive linemen and that that was the separator in top programs and not many programs had it and your conference had the most. With the explosion of offense, has that changed? Well, you always want that speed, but what else has changed? Is there a position or a couple positions that have been elevated to that point of separation?”
Saban: “To give you an example, I think about 10 years ago, we led the conference giving up 8.5 points a game on defense for the season. This year, we gave up 19.5 points a game and we were first in the conference. So, I think the game has changed dramatically, and I mean, the whole no-huddle, faster pace, more plays, more opportunities for the offense. But also the rules in college football sort of favor the offense. Being able to block 3.5 yards downfield, RPOs, you can block across the line of scrimmage if the ball’s caught behind the line of scrimmage. And people have figured out ways to make tremendous run-pass conflicts for defensive players. But I also think the style of players that you have to have now -- more athletic, more able to play in space because now the game is not played in the small, it’s played in a huge rectangle and you’ve gotta defend vertically and horizontally, the entire field. So obviously to have players, whether it’s linebackers, safeties, defensive linemen, that are more athletic, that have more range, that can run, change direction, make plays in space has become a premium in our game.”


Coach K: “You also have to have poise, and your teams have great poise. And your quarterback, although he got recognition, I don’t know that he got all the recognition because you have so many good players. This guy was as accurate, he had to be as accurate as any quarterback that you’ve had. And he seemed amazingly poised, like he was always in control of the situation. What about his accuracy and how did he build that up?
Saban: “I think Mac is a great example of what more players in college should look at because he’s the epitome of development. This was his fourth year being in the program. He played a little bit last year when Tua got hurt at the end of the season. And he played for three behind a lot of really good players, and he used those things to develop. And emotionally was one of the big things. You talked about humility and poise, I always teased Mac because he was a tennis player in high school, and he used to get so mad when he made a bad play. He would kick and fuss and talk to himself, and I used to call him John McEnroe. I said, ‘No, you can’t throw your racket out here. You’ve gotta focus on the next play. When you’re doing all this stuff, you’re affecting your teammates, aight, because they’re looking at you like what’s up, man? You’re the quarterback. We’re kind of counting on you to get us in the right play, make the right choice, make the right decision.’


“So, he sort of matured and learned over the years that that was a really important thing, and he played with more poise, visualized every play before it ever happened, exactly what he needed to do to make that play work. He’s always been a very accurate guy throwing the ball. He’s got a 4.0 grade point average. He’s already finished his master’s degree before he ever played in the game. So, he took all those things that were really assets for him and he built on those things to become a really outstanding player and didn’t make a lot of bad reads, didn’t make a lot of poor decisions. It’s kind of like a point guard in basketball. He was very accurate throwing the ball and he had a great understanding of what his role was and what he needed to do to help other people make plays and did about as flawlessly as anybody we’ve ever had at that position.”


Coach K: “You have done something that hardly anyone in sport has done, and that has do with continuity of the highest level of excellence. The Patriots have done it. Auerbach did it. In college football, I don’t really think anyone has really done it. I’m not blowing smoke at you, but you’ve been the greatest coach in the history of the game of football. And to get that continuity with the involvement of all these jobs that people get from being in your (program), how do you keep that continuity going? Because you’re putting more people out there in positions than anybody. How are you able to handle that?
Saban: “I think we try to establish a culture here in terms of a culture of accountability in personal development, academics, career development and football. And the culture never changes. The people change and we try to hire new people with new energy, new ideas, new enthusiasm. But the culture never changes of how we do things, the discipline, the togetherness, the positive energy, people being responsible to do their jobs so that they can execute in a positive way. It was interesting to me -- I think it was two summers ago -- Julio Jones was here and he was watching 7-on-7 in the summertime. The coaches aren’t allowed out there, so we’re not supposed to be watching. The players told me that he was watching them, and one of the players dropped a pass, kicked the ball, started fussing and kind of being emotional about making a mistake. Julio just says, ‘That’s not the way we do it here.’ He hasn’t played here for 10 years (laughs).


“So, the culture that the players understand and the coaches and the people in the organization that we’re trying to make everybody be the best version of themselves, that doesn’t change. Now, when you have a lot of internal changes, sometimes it makes it a little more difficult to get everybody to buy into that, but that’s the challenge, to get everybody to buy into it, to keep it sort of moving in the right direction, making changes where you need to make changes. But the culture of how people go about their work every day doesn’t really ever change.”
Coach K: “I appreciate you being on. Thanks so much. I know you’ve been an ambassador for college football and for intercollegiate sports, but just having you on the show and your insights into leadership and teamwork and all that, I would hope that you find time to share those with our society in speaking and whatever because you do it the right way and it’s class personified. And our country needs those words. So, God bless you, man. I’m incredibly grateful for you being on the show, but also incredibly grateful that you’re coaching and will be coaching for a long time. You serve as a great example for all us, so thanks very much, Nick.”


Saban: “I appreciate you saying that, but Coach K, we all have a few mentors that we always kind of look for, even from afar, to sort of reinforce the way we do things as well as learn new ways. I want you to know you’ve always been one of the people that I kind of always look for how you do things, how you handle things, things you say, things you say publicly and watch your teams and how you manage and handle your teams. In a way, you’re responsible for some of this stuff, so I appreciate that, as well.”
2COMMENTS
Coach K: “Thank you for being kind, especially during this season. This has been a challenging year in every way. But God bless you and your family, and I hope you get some time to enjoy this, too. Again, I appreciate you being on, my friend.”

 

[bama alum]

Wonder what Coach K had to say about Oats when they went off the air.

 

[rick4bama]

Great read!

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

I keep expecting him to be a guest speaker to the football team during summer camp one August. Bet it happens at some point.

 

[AFF]