I recently read “Saban: The Making of a Coach” by Monte Burke. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.
“Saban, at a very young age, learned to embrace and love the process of doing.” (16)
“He’s not worried about what you feel about his decisions, he doesn’t care who likes it. He makes every decision based on winning football games. He was unusual like that.” (70)
“His work ethic – the hours, the concentration – demonstrated something: that for all of his social awkwardness and screaming, he gave everything he had to make his team better and win. It showed, in whatever unusual way, a sort of unselfishness, which is perhaps the most important part of leadership. He never asked for more than he gave, but what he gave was sometimes nearly impossible for his assistants to match.” (155)
“The thing you figure out about Nick real early is that it’s fourth-and-one every second of every minute of every hour of every day.” (174)
“When it came ot the football program, “the Process” was all about doing what you could control, every minute of every day. The bigger picture wasn’t the focus, but all those little steps taken that filled it out. Saban sharply defined everyone’s role within the program and worked relentlessly to eliminate what he called “clutter.”” (230)
“His coaches didn’t visualize the relief and the joy they would feel on National Signign Day, when that five-start player they’d spent a year recruiting joined the team. Instead, they did the little things every day to help further the possibility of that result.” (230)
“Saban constantly admonished his players not to think about lifting a trophy at the end of the season, but focus on conditioning, reps in practice, and on keeping their grades up to remain eligible to play. Control what you can control, and find fulfillment within that.” (230)
“William Gass once joked in his novel The Tunnel, “If Americans ever had a dictator, they’d call him Coach.”” (290)
“The entire “Process” was the idea that the focus wasn’t on the past or the future, but the present, and that every single action one took in life mattered.” (296)
“Those who knew Saban had long realized that two of the most significant aspects of his career – his “Process” and his near-constant job-hopping-were intertwined at one crucial juncture: THey both, at their essence, were about the fact that Saban found it “more invigorating to want than to have,” as David Foster Wallace once wrote.” (302)
Liked the quotes? Click here to buy the book.
