Mark WiedmerAlabama football coach Nick Saban is not an easy guy to like, even if he's an incredibly easy guy to respect. And awe. And, depending on which college team you root for, dislike bordering on hate.
But to watch him conduct interviews or coach from the sideline is to imagine a guy who wouldn't be much fun to sit beside in a drive-thru line, much less share a five-course dinner with. He seems to be all business all of the time, and his dominant emotion most often appears to be anger.
Yet as last Saturday's postgame interviews for the Crimson Tide's semifinal playoff win over Washington in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl were wrapping up inside the Georgia Dome, Saban began to talk about a letter written by injured Bama defensive back Eddie Jackson that wound up on The Players Tribune website (www.theplayerstribune.com).
In a passage that surely touched Saban, Jackson wrote: "Playing good football is hard work. It takes hours and hours of sweat and preparation. You have to push yourself to a level you didn't think was possible. But as everyone in this program knows, playing good football is - more than anything else - really, really fun."
Hours and hours of sweat and preparation. Or as Saban loves to call it, The Process.
Yet that's not so much what he talked about after the Washington win. Instead he told the assembled media: "When you're in that huddle, there ain't nobody special. Everybody's together. Everybody has respect for each other, and everybody appreciates the job that everybody else does. And you can go a long way in doing a lot of things, and you may never find that. But you find it when you play football and you play together as a team."
There are those who have somewhat rightly written that Saban's words apply to everyone but himself. How can Saban - who walked out on the Miami Dolphins to coach Alabama in 2007 after repeatedly saying he wasn't interested in the Tide job - blast quarterback Blake Barnett earlier this season for "quitting" the team?
Or as Saban sourly surmised, "There's certain things that I was taught growing up about not quitting and seeing things through. I think if I would have come home and told my dad that I was going to quit the team, I think he would have kicked me out of the house."
Still, there is a certain camaraderie and romance to being part of a team, especially a good team, that can melt even the hardest of shells. And this team, more than most others he's coached, seems to impact Saban that way. Deep down, whether he admits it or not, he knows these years and these teams don't often surface. After all, only one of his four championships at Bama has included an undefeated season. And none of those teams appeared as dominant as this one on his beloved defensive side of the ball.
Earlier this week, former Saban players Marcus Spears (LSU) and Greg McElroy (Bama) told the SEC Network what they felt best defined him.
"The first time I met him, he told me, 'Don't ever be results-oriented,'" Spears recalled.
Said McElroy: "Most consistent guy I've ever been around. There's never success for him. He constantly fights against complacency."
No coach has ever had the success Saban has had the past eight years. He's already won four national championships with a possible fifth on the way. His record over that span of time heading into Monday night's title game: 100-10.
But it's not just Saban fighting complacency.
We return to Jackson's letter and something he wrote about the lessons he learned by being beaten day after day on the practice field by former Tide great Amari Cooper: "That's the advantage we have over everybody else. We earn all our experience the hard way on the practice field against future early-round (NFL) draft picks."
He added: "At Alabama you're either teaching or you're learning - always. The reason we're a great team has nothing to do with external pressure or anything else like that. What pushes this program to a higher level is that each (Tide player) demands the very best out of each other."
This is Saban's greatest gift. He has found a way to build a dynasty focusing on team over the individual in the Age of Self and Selfies.
Beyond that, return to Jackson's line: "At Alabama you're either teaching or you're learning - always."
As the SEC Network was recently interviewing Tide defensive lineman Jonathan Allen, it asked him to describe his perfect play. You might expect to say he wanted to take a guy's head off, which, of course, might draw a targeting foul, perhaps even an ejection, but would surely light up social media and ESPN's plays of the day.
Allen said he'd like to hit the quarterback from his blindside around "his rib cage."
Forget how much safer the game would be with that mindset. From a championship football standpoint, merely focus on how much smarter that attitude is regarding penalties. You're either teaching or you're learning. Always.
None of this guarantees that the Tide will beat the Tigers on Monday night. Dabo Swinney's become a pretty fair coach, too. And if Bama has a defensive weakness, it might be on deep passes. For the uninformed, Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson led the nation in completions of 15 yards or longer with 63.
But whatever happens in Tampa shouldn't lessen what Saban has accomplished by focusing on the process rather than the result.
Instead, we might all attempt to more closely follow his advice, if only to better appreciate each and every new day rather than always focusing only on the precious few ones we anticipate becoming special.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com