Phil Savage has known Saban for more than 20 years. When then-Cleveland Browns coach Bill Belichick named Saban defensive coordinator in 1991, Savage was a defensive assistant. They followed different paths through the years, but always stayed close. Savage, in addition to numerous other things, is now the color commentator for Alabama football on the Crimson Tide Sports Network.
And when asked why Saban is so good at this, he at first talks about the basic things. Saban is driven. Saban is competitive. Saban has learned from great coaches like Don James (his coach at Kent State) and Earle Bruce and George Perles and Jerry Glanville and, most of all, Bill Belichick. Savage talks about how Saban has never stopped learning and that he’s a better coach now than he was five years ago, a better coach five years ago then he was 10 and so on. “Alabama is very lucky,” he says, “to have a fully developed Nick Saban who has constantly improved and now has an answer for every situation.”
But then he says something about Saban that he says is different from perhaps any other college coach he’s ever known. He says that college coaches gradually and unconsciously move away from the field. They can’t really help it. The job is so huge and pulls in so many directions. There are so many responsibilities. It’s a CEO's job with ultimate responsibility in marketing and public relations and media relations and community outreach and education and recruiting and game planning and fundraising and budgeting and countless other details. Coaches find themselves getting pulled away from the day-to-day coaching because there are so many other things to do.
Nick Saban, he says, has never stopped coaching.
“It’s amazing,” he says. “He coaches on the field, every single day, just like he did when I first met him in 1991. All the other things get done, and get done right. And he’s still out there throwing footballs to defensive backs and correcting footwork. I mean, you’re talking about the best defensive backs coach in the country, and he’s also the head coach at Alabama.
“You see other coaches, after they’ve had success, they’re in a golf cart, they’re on a tower, they’re glad-handing donors on the sidelines. Nick Saban gets in there for practice every day. I think that’s where he gets the joy out of the job. He wouldn’t give it up. He can’t give it up.”
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