Top 55 Nick Saban Quotes

I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.

I think I’m pretty misunderstood, because I’m not just about football.

When people have success, one of two things happen. They either get really satisfied and want to keep thinking about it and talking about what they did, or the success becomes a little addictive, and it makes them want to keep having more.

Once you get good, you need a total disposition about staying good.

It’s a free country. I know we have a lot of regulations in the world right now in what we can and can’t do. I would rather our people be responsible and not have to be regulated.

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.

It’s great to see our players get some of their dreams come true.

I’ve had a lot more success helping guys then just being punitive.

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?

My wife gets so mad at me because I don’t like to cook on the grill.

I don’t control what people say. I don’t control what people put on dot-com or anything else.

I don’t want people to think I’m not happy when we win – I am. But there’s a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, ‘This is it – we conquered the world.’ We didn’t. We just won a game.

Bill Belichick was probably the most organized coach that I’ve ever been involved with.

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.

George Perles at Michigan State was the first coach that gave me responsibility as far as being a coordinator. I learned a lot from that experience.

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.

People talk about you won four national championships. Well, I feel like we’ve had good enough teams to win eight. So I feel like we failed four times. I feel like I failed four times.

I think people who grow up in one particular environment, like the Alabama-Auburn game, they don’t ever get the same appreciation for the Ohio State-Michigan game or the Michigan State-Notre Dame game or the Michigan-Michigan State game, the Browns and the Steelers.

Probably the number one position that has the greatest number of players to choose from is receiver. When we’re out there recruiting, there are a lot of receivers out there to recruit. It’s harder to find defensive players.

As a coach, when it comes to football players, we’re trying to change their behavior and make them better. As people, we’re trying to change their behavior and make them better.

We played in a number of these neutral site games, I would call them, whether it’s a playoff game, a bowl game, or one of these kickoff classic type things, which I think is helpful to, you know, our players in terms of playing some place that’s not really a home game for them.

Talent is talent, and everybody knows somebody who has talent or ability, but they never really converted it into a productive performance for whatever reasons.

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.

I just want everybody to know that I’m opposed to an unauthorized biography on anybody.

I think a lot of times you have to face your fears. I think everybody has to face their fears.

You wear your team out, and it’s hard to get them back.

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.

I loved it at LSU.

Our players get scrutinized pretty hard at Alabama.

I try to stay out of the spotlight.

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.

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.

I said as soon as we had a playoff, we were going to minimize the importance of all the other bowl games. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; it kind of is what it is.

We don’t have rules that people can’t use Twitter. We just want people to be responsible. We certainly don’t want them to do anything that’s going to affect themselves in an adverse way or affect our program, our university, or our team in an adverse way.

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.’

Mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.

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.

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.

I don’t try to sensationalize anybody. I’m not trying to entertain. I’m trying to give information and give access to me and tell about our program.

When you have a system, you kind of get in a routine of what’s important. And then you spend a lot more time on thinking of things that would make it better.

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.

It’s never OK to lose a game.

I feel like I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.

I don’t Twitter. I don’t text for those very reasons. I don’t want anything to be misinterpreted. I would encourage our guys not to do that.

You can’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I think the worst thing a player can do is just not be yourself.

If I were a high school coach, I would put my best players on offense. The best athletes on my team, I would give them the ball and score points. I wouldn’t play them on defense. I would play them where they can get the ball and score points.

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.

You can blame the other guy for saying it, or you can look at yourself and say, ‘I must have contributed to this.’

First of all, you’ve got to have a vision of ‘What kind of program do I want to have?’ Then you’ve got to have a plan to implement it. Then you’ve got to set the example that you want, develop the principles and values that are important, and get people to buy into it.

I don’t ever want the players to relax in a game.

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.

I never want to discontinue giving kids opportunities.

All I know is that if we play well, we control our own destiny in terms of what we do.