How Nick Saban Controls the Uncontrollable

Many people watching this video might think Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban is protecting confidential information, not allowing the media or his opponents to know the status of injured players. Your reaction might be that he’s being overly paranoid, avoiding transparency during spring practice, a meaningless time of the season. The coach speak makes it hard for the writers and fans to discern what is happening within the program.

Saban begins by telling the media what he isn’t going to discuss, citing rules allowing him to be so secretive. That steals the headlines. He continues to explain his thought process when dealing with players missing time. In both explanations, Saban makes clear that the team wins either way. If a player can practice, improvement takes place; if he can’t, improvement can occur to the next person in line. Either way, Saban believes it’s a victory for the team, and that’s all he cares about.

Instead of feeding into the negative connotations related to players missing practice, which would send a message to the team that unless player Y is healthy, we cannot perform at the highest level, Saban finds the positive. He lets everyone know that Alabama has a “next-man-up” mentality. He is using the media to teach his players what he wants them to learn. Had Saban taken the negative outlook or spent time engaging on who will play or not, he would’ve created a false narrative to the team. It would’ve allowed doubt to creep in, and it would’ve sent a message that some players are more important than others.

How we deal with the uncontrollable is the main lesson from Coach Saban in this video. He followed six pivotal steps:

We often hear the saying, “Don’t worry about the things you can’t control.” But if we ignore taking some form of action, a false narrative gets spread to those we lead. Let’s instead take Coach Saban’s approach and follow the action steps.