If You Want to Understand Nick Saban, Watch Him at Practice

Everybody has a personal side and a public side. One reporter joked to me that both of Nick Saban's were surly. He was just joking, but that is the impression many have of him.

If you really want to know Saban, watch him at practice. He's yelling, he's coaching, he's criticizing, and he's praising.

This spring a smiling Rolando McClain told me that if he calls your number, he's mad at you, and if he calls your name, it's because you did something good.

Now I have been to some practices and seen this myself, and nobody likes to hear their number called.

Miss a tackle, be out of position, or do something else he notices, and you can be sure to hear something like, "55! Hey 55! You're killing me here! What were you supposed to have done that play?"

"He sees everything," said Javier Arenas. "He can be over with the offensive linemen and see a defensive back make a mistake across the field, and it's, 'Hey 28, you can't defend that pass with your body turned in the wrong direction! Do we have to go over fundamentals again?'"

Indeed, his perfectionist tendencies show abundantly at practice. So do his temper and his will to win.

Yes, he is compulsive. Yes, he can be anal-retentive about minute details, and yes, he can be direct and abrasive.

"Coach Saban is a winner. If you play golf with him, he's going to try and win. That's just in his DNA. Why bother doing anything unless you're going to be the best at it?" coach Kirby Smart told me earlier this summer about Saban.

"He's 100 percent wide open 100 percent of the time, and he only expects the other coaches and the team to keep up with him," Smart said with a grin. "And if that's the standard he sets for himself, it runs from the top down."

And then there's the word you hear over and over again—finish.

You'll hear Saban yell things like, "Hey 62, finish that play! Play through the whistle! I want to finish!" Or, "Come on offense, you're killing me here! You've got to finish that drive! We didn't start this drive for a few lousy first downs. FINISH!"

And you'll surely hear, "Hey 72! Are you just going to block as long as you think you need to or until the play is over? Finish that play! You stay in front of that man until after the whistle has stopped blowing! Understand?"

Therein lies the real Saban. This is a man who loves challenges. He loves recruiting and the day-to-day coaching that gets that talent level even higher. For Saban, it's exactly what he yells in practice so often.

Finish!

"I didn't come to Alabama to win 10 games a year and be a contender," Saban told me. "I came here to win championships. Conference championships and national championships. I love it here because that's just not what I want, but what this fanbase expects."

So with Saban, getting the best prospects is just the beginning. Coaching them up to be better than they knew they could be is just the second step. Making them all fit together into a winning team is the third step, and finishing on top is the only end worth settling for.

Just for the record, there is a softer side of Saban. You just won't see it on game day or in a practice or press conference. That's just not part of the Saban "Process."