Previous book reviews:
The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban
John Talty
Copyright 2022
Ben Bella Books
A few highlights from the book:
- When changing the Michigan State culture, Saban followed the principles found in Harvard Business Chool professor John Kotter’s book, “Leading Change’.
- The important lesson in Alabama’s [recruiting] approach: don’t fill your organization with people for whom you don’t have a specific role in mind when you hire them.
- Alabama had Ken Smithier, president of P3 Insights, interview the 2019 freshman class about why they chose Alabama. One-third of the players said they chose Alabama because Saban didn’t make any promises about playing time.
- Sam Walker did an exhaustive search to determine the greatest sports teams (not just football) of all time across the globe. He identified seven primary traits that were shared by the elite captains of these teams.
- The most powerful agent in college sports, Jimmy Sexton, was the agent for both Saban and Lane Kiffin and helped facilitate a meeting with the two after Kiffin was fired by USC.
- Saban’s rehabilitation program of bringing in coaches who were once considered successful but had fallen on hard times was his way of capitalizing on a market inefficiency. Mike Groh, the son of former Virginia and New York Jets head coach Al Groh, considers himself the trailblazer in this area by joining Saban’s staff as a 37-year-old graduate assistant.
- The person credited with helping Saban create “The Process” is Michigan State University psychiatry professor Dr. Lionel “Lonny” Rosen.
A quote for college football fans:
Being prepared is a mindset as much as it is a lifestyle.
While at Toledo together, L.C. Cole remembers getting a call one morning from Saban. It was Christmas.
“What are you doing L.C.?” Saban asked his running backs coach.
“Well, I’m here enjoying my first Christmas with my wife,” Cole responded.
“You want to go watch some film?” Saban asked.
My wife heard him and looked me right in the face,” saves Cole. “I said, ‘I don’t think so, Coach – you’re going to make me get divorced.’”
The phone call left a deep impression on him. “Man, this guy is on perfection on Christmas Day. He’s looking at film on Christmas.”
A quote for Ohio State fans:
Saban had long been interested in human psychology, and Rosen introduced him to process thinking that emphasized breaking down big things into more easily completed tasks. Ahead of a game [in 1998] against No. 1 undefeated Ohio State, Saban asked Rosen an important question: What do you tell a team that thinks it has no chance to win?
Rather than identifying winning the game as the goal, [Dr. Lionel “Lonny”] Rosen encouraged Saban to stress winning each play instead. If players could zero in on what they needed to do a few seconds at a time to win the play – and could repeat that behavior throughout a game – they’d tend to get the desired big result without making it the focus.
The idea deeply resonated with Saban, who told his team that week to focus on the process rather than the results.
It was Saban’s biggest win as a coach to date and a sign that he was on to something emphasizing process thinking.
My Review:
We have been waiting for this book for a long time, and now it’s here, a systematic and detailed look at the leadership principles and philosophy that Nick Saban has used to build and maintain his football dynasty at the University of Alabama. This isn’t just another book about college football. It’s about one man’s adherence and application of specific a leadership philosophy to his profession. Every coach, regardless of sport, should read this book.
Talty does not write a memoir or biography. This is not a collection of entertaining stories with banal applications marketed as “secrets” attempting to elevate the book’s sophistication. What Talty writes is a book on leadership using Nick Saban as a case study. Anecdotes about games, players and situations are shared only when they support the leadership principle at hand.
Talty does an excellent job of providing some of the source material that led to the development and implementation of Saban’s famed “Process”. Examples include: Sam Walker’s, “The Captain’s Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams”, Trevor Mowoad’s, “It Takes What it Takes”, and Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy theory.
What the book does not and perhaps cannot address is the question of fulfillment. As applied by Saban, "The Process" is a philosophy that creates a single-minded focus taking whatever steps are necessary to climb the next rung of the ladder. It is a powerful technique that can be used to achieve incredible results in football and in life; however, it never asks if the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
After winning the 2003 championship at LSU, a LSU trustee found a despondent Saban who asked, “What am I going to do now?” Saban was famously visibly upset when his team dumped Gatorade on him in the closing moments his first championship with Alabama in 2010 against Texas. Greg McElroy reflected,
“That’s something, in some ways, that’s been detrimental because that constant thirst for something more can force you to not appreciate the moment. I know I’ve dealt with that. There’s always something you’re striving for and sometimes you can’t sit back and enjoy where you’re at in life because there has to be some level of constant improvement.”
Nick Saban has achieved more success than any other college football coach ever. Is he happy?
About the Author (from the cover)
John Talty is the Senior Sports Editor and SEC Insider for Alabama Media Group, the leading statewide news organization. He is an award-winning journalist who has covered college sports for nearly two decades, with a focus on the Southeastern Conference for most of the last decade.
