Publish365 012: Be Like Nick Saban
There are two people in this world: those who recognize Nick Saban as the greatest coach in college football history, and people who are wrong. There is no middle ground. The man is proving, year after year, that no one can touch him in college football. To say he has the golden touch is an understatement akin to saying "Einstein was pretty smart."
No coach in the history of college football could say that if you played for him in the last 14 years, you are guaranteed to have won a national championship. In fact, many people who have played for him in that time frame have won more than one national championship. That puts him on a plateau that literally no other coach has ever reached, and likely won't any time soon. I won't be as bold as to say that it will never be topped, but it's such an achievement that people will be talking about Saban for a very long time to come before anyone even approaches his level. You can hate on him all you want, but the man is the clearest example of a winner that there is in sports.
How he did it, though, is even more impressive. In 2003, he won the National Championship with LSU, then followed it up with an average season at LSU that was unremarkable in every way. He would later join the Dolphins as their head coach. It turned out to be a failed experiment, but Alabama was looking for a new coach, and in December of 2006 the Crimson Tide were rumored to be hiring Saban. When the NFL season was officially over, Saban announced he was indeed leaving for Alabama.
It took a few years, but the "fun" got started in 2009 and the chain of championships started. Saban would win championships in 2003, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020, and is one of very few coaches to win a National Championship at the helm of two teams (LSU and Alabama). As with most people who are highly successful, Saban was not without his haters and detractors. One of my friends who regularly crapped on Alabama and Saban, even though they run one of the cleanest and most academically sound programs in college sports, was that Saban recruited 27 year olds to play for him. The amount of nonsense I've heard, as a Tide fan, about Saban is remarkable, but it's usually by people who are huge fans of much less successful programs. Saban is hated because he wins, and he doesn't care if you don't or how you feel about it.
He promotes excellence, and at times an amount of swagger that people find off-putting, but if you're being honest, he's earned that right to have some swagger. He's at the top of his field, and indisputably one of the best at a job very few people ever get the opportunity to do.
When I think about my life, I think about people like Nick Saban. I want to be unapologetically successful, and happy with where I am to the point that the naysayers don't matter. I want to be so successful that being around me makes people more successful. When I walk into a room I want to figure out if I'm the most successful person in it, and then determine if that means I should leave or not. None of these things are going to be handed to me; I have to reach out and grab them, and that's what I'm doing: reaching out and grabbing it by working as hard as I can to do all the things that will put me in that position. I'm listening to people who are where I want to be and modeling my life and work ethic on their actions.
You don't get into a 9-figure mindset by hanging out with people working part time for $20k a year and you don't earn success by modeling your life on people who aren't successful. I'll keep my eyes on Nick Saban and work as hard as I can to match that level of energy. I think that's a great place to start.
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