Best Nick Saban Quotes

Nick Saban Quotes About Success, Teamwork, Discipline, Preparation, Process, Leadership, Winning, Funny & Losing! Nick Saban is a well-known name in the American football coaching community. Nick Saban was born on October 31st, 1951, in Fairmont, West Virginia. His formal schooling began at Monongah High School, and he then went to Kent State University, where he took commerce and got a bachelor’s degree in 1973.

After that, he went on to earn a master’s degree in sports management from Kent State University in 1975. During his time at Kent State University, from 1970 to 1972, he was a defensive back for the Kent State Golden Flashes football team, which Don James has led. After that, he became an assistant coach at many universities, including Syracuse, West Virginia, Ohio State, Navy, and Michigan State.

Following the conclusion of the 1987 campaign, Nick Saban accepted a position as an assistant coach with the Houston Oilers of the National Football League. Nick Saban led the LSU Tigers football team as head coach from the year 2000 to the year 2004. Until 2007, he has held the position of head coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide, taking the team to 9 SEC West championships, 8 SEC championships, and six national championships.

He won his seventh title to break Paul Bear Bryant’s previous record of six national championships as an NCAA football coach. Nick Saban has been awarded several coaches of the year accolades, including two Paul Bear Bryant Awards, two AP College Football Coaches of the Year, and five SEC Coaches of the Year honors. In addition, he has been awarded to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. His total record as head coach is 269–67–1 (college) and 15–17 (NFL).

Best Nick Saban Quotes

1. “The opponent should never determine your level of competitive spirit.”-Nick Saban

2. “One thing about championship teams is that they’re resilient. No matter what is thrown at them, no matter how deep the hole, they find a way to bounce back and overcome adversity.”-Nick Saban

3. “Every time you think of winning the national championship—stop. Instead, think of what you have to do to dominate your opponent for sixty minutes.”-Nick Saban

4. “In my three decades of coaching, I’ve learned that the process is much more important than the result.”-Nick Saban

5. “In life, your road map is knowing what you want to accomplish then committing yourself to doing the things necessary to reach that destination. You cannot get there without hard work and perseverance.”-Nick Saban

6. “The major by-product of creating a mission statement and vision for you or your organization is that it creates a culture of expectations. If you have clearly defined who you are and where you want to go, then there is no longer any need for debate about it…everyone knows what to expect.”-Nick Saban

7. “There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.”-Nick Saban

8. “I think everybody should take the attitude that we’re working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do every day, we want to be a champion.”-Nick Saban

9. “Becoming a champion is not an easy process…It is done by focusing on what it takes to get there and not on getting there.”-Nick Saban

10. “Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.”-Nick Saban

11. “One thing I always tell players is that there are three bad things: Nothing good happens after midnight, nothing good happens when you’re around guns unless you’re going hunting, and you don’t want to mess around with women that you don’t know because a lot of times, bad things happen.”-Nick Saban

12. “We create a standard for how we want to do things, and everybody’s got to buy into that standard or you really can’t have any team chemistry.”-Nick Saban

13. “There’s two parts of leadership. You’ve got to be a good leader – you’ve got to be somebody that people want to emulate and care about the other people. But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.”-Nick Saban

14. “We all have anxiety about things. We all have little insecurities, but eventually you have to face your fears if you want to be successful, and everybody has some fear of failure.”-Nick Saban

15. “So I want everybody to think here for a second. How much does this game mean to you? ‘Cause it if means something to you, you can’t stand still. You understand? You play fast. You play strong. You go out there and dominate the man you’re playing against and you make his ass quit. That’s our trademark. That’s our M.O. as a team. That’s what people know us as.”-Nick Saban

16. “I want everybody here to know, this is not the end. This is the beginning.”-Nick Saban

17. “We have three kinds of guys on our team. We have guys that get it; they play good; they understand how to play winning football. We have some guys that are trying to get it, and they are working hard every day? We are supporting them, and we want the guys that have it to support them. Then we have some guys that don’t get it and don’t know that they don’t get it. We are trying to replace them. We only have a couple left.”-Nick Saban

18. “We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.”-Nick Saban

19. “There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.”-Nick Saban

20. “I don’t think it’s about who you play, I think it’s about who you are.”-Nick Saban

21. “Everybody hits me up for eating Little Debbies, but no one passes that cookie jar without taking one.”-Nick Saban

22. “Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.”-Nick Saban

23. “What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference – the precious present moment.”-Nick Saban

24. “A good process produces good results.”-Nick Saban

25. “You can’t win together if you don’t work together.”-Nick Saban

26. “I don’t throw it as much, as I get older,” Saban said. “That’s really what’s hard on those straw hats,  when you sort of sling them when somebody doesn’t do what they are supposed to do.”-Nick Saban

27. “I remember how scared to death I was as a little kid of Santa Claus.”-Nick Saban

28. “If we just didn’t do that kind of stuff, we wouldn’t have to worry about it.”-Nick Saban

29. “If I had a barometer…to see whether you were giving effort, or not, it was about 50 percent.”-Nick Saban

30. “The thing they were most concerned about is that he had a commitment to come back and try to help the team be successful.”-Nick Saban