Mick Jagger can sing. Mick Jagger is a great entertainer.
— Nick Saban
I don't ever want the players to relax in a game.
I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.
There needs to be a college football commissioner.
I want what's best for our country. I'm not sure I can figure that out.
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.
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.
I think there's a certain pride people have in competition.
Steph Curry is special in terms of the kind of competitor he is.
I guess I'm motivated by the fear of failure to some degree and knowing what can happen when you don't do things the way you need to do them to have success.
I'm not going to be the Alabama coach.
When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it's make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who's in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you're investing your time in that.
I don't think I'm complicated at all. I'm not political, and I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and I don't say bad things about people. There is no agenda. There's no trying to fool somebody.
College football is the only game in the country, of any kind, that the college game is longer than the pro game.
One of these days when I'm finished coaching at Alabama, I'll write an authorized book because there's only one expert on my life, and guess who that is... me. And there won't be any misinformation. There won't be any false statements. There won't be any hearsay. There won't be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.
I just want everybody to know that I'm opposed to an unauthorized biography on anybody.
I loved it at LSU.
There needs to be somebody that looks out for what's best for the game, not what's best for the Big 10 or what's best for the SEC or what's best for Jim Harbaugh, but what's best for the game of college football - the integrity of the game, the coaches, the players, and the people that play it.
If I say I like one person, that means everybody that voted for the other person doesn't like me. So, why would I do that?
All I know is that if we play well, we control our own destiny in terms of what we do.
I think a lot of times you have to face your fears. I think everybody has to face their fears.
I don't believe you name a starter until the starter wins the team.
I think when you win the national championship, it works throughout your team. Where human nature is to say, I did well. I got my quota this month. Now do I get some time off? Do I get a bonus? Do I get to go on a cruise? But it's not to keep trying to be the best. That's not necessarily human nature.
I certainly like to win. But I really hate to lose. So when you think about that, you're always motivated to, 'I don't want to lose the next game. I don't want to lose the next game.'
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.
Now, everybody always says there's no 'I' in team, but there is an 'I' in win, because the individuals make the team what it is, and how they think and what they do is important to the team. So when you act like the individual is not important, well, it is damn important who these people are and what they are.
I think I'm pretty misunderstood, because I'm not just about football.
I don't know that there's any particular scientific evidence that you could say, more guys get hurt in this offense versus that one, or hurry-up, or whatever, but everything that we've ever done in the NCAA is about exposure. How many exposures does a player get?
You can blame the other guy for saying it, or you can look at yourself and say, 'I must have contributed to this.'
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.
When I talk about a successful program, define that. It's not just winning the national championship every year because nobody can do that.
I want what's best for people who want to improve the quality of their life. I hope whoever our leader is will do all that he can do to make our country safe and improve the quality of life for a lot of the people we have in our country, and I don't think I am qualified to determine who that should be.
It's been our goal as a program to always give our players the best opportunity to be successful, whether it's personally, academically, or athletically.
You can't allow yourself to be vulnerable.
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. I don't think I'd have a place to stay.
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.
It's never OK to lose a game.
I always ask myself the question, do you like to win, or do you hate to lose?
What makes Freddy Krueger such a horrible character? What makes him scare you to death? You can't get rid of the guy. He never goes away.
Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people.
Soccer is a continuous game, rugby is a continuous game, but for the physical elements that are involved in playing a football game and the number of plays that you play, I don't know that it was ever intended to be a continuous game.
My wife goes to Birmingham five times a week. My mom lives in Birmingham now after moving from Myrtle Beach. It's not just the job. A lot of people don't get that. My life is here.
