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.