In one of the funnier and more heartwarming stories about Nick Saban to be told by a former player after Coach Saban’s retirement, former Rolling Tide running back Derrick Henry appeared for an interview on a podcast called “The Pivot” and joked about how Saban caught onto players praying in public and then living lives of vice afterward, telling them to cut it out.
As background, “The Pivot is is podcast that “features NFL stars Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder as host for a weekly sit-down with top athletes and entertainers, delivering relevant topics, discussions, and current events impacting today’s world.” Derrick Henry is now a running back for the Baltimore Ravens, an NFL team.
Coach Saban retired at the close of the 2023-24 season, a season that ended in a Rose Bowl loss to the eventual national-champion Michigan Wolverines. Now 72, his retirement came after about five long decades of coaching.
Speaking to The Pivot, Henry reminded the college football what it lost with the retirement of the 72-year-old coach, saying that Saban was “old school” and tried to guide his players toward living lives as men rather than dissolute lives of vice. That was particularly true with his pet peeve about how players would act one way during games then go crazy after a win.
Beginning, Henry noted that Coach Saban couldn’t stand post-score showboating and celebrating, finding it annoying and telling players to cut it out. Henry said, “Coach Saban, he old school. Couldn’t stand if anybody scoring and wanted to celebrate afterward.”
Continuing, he added, “So, we were in a meeting after a game. Can’t remember who he played. He pulled up film and show everybody. ‘You guys, stop doing that showboating, doing all that prayer hands, acting like you thanking God. Later on that night, 12 o’clock, you down there (with) Black & Milds. Got liquor and chasing (girls). Forget all that.'”
Watch Henry reminisce about Saban here:
Commenting on his outlook on sports and coaching during a panel with Senator Ted Cruz about Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), Saban described the importance he places on developing players, saying, “All the things I’ve believed in for all these years — 50 years of coaching — no longer exist in college athletics . . . It’s always was about developing players, always been about helping people be more successful in life.”
He continued, “My wife even said to me — we have all the recruits over on Sunday with their parents for breakfast. She would always meet with the mothers and talk about how she was going to help impact their sons and how they would be well taken care of. She came to me right before I retired and said, ‘Why are we doing this?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘All they care about is how much you’re going to pay them. They don’t care about how you’re going to develop them, which is what we’ve always done. So why are you doing this?’
He then added that he doesn’t think the NIL rules will further that goal, saying, “To me, that was sort of a red alert that we really are creating a circumstance here that is not beneficial to the young people, which is why I always did what I did. My dad did it, I did it. So that’s the reason I always like college athletics more than the NFL because you had the opportunity to develop young people.”
He added that he always tried to steer his players in the right direction, saying, “Basically, I always did what I did so people would be more successful in life. You’re trying to develop a value-based system just like a value-based business that would create opportunities for young people to be more successful. So, this started with personal development. This started with academic support to make sure guys graduated and prepared themselves for when they couldn’t play football.”
Featured image credit: By Carol M. Highsmith – Library of Congress- Catalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2010638313- Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/master/pnp/highsm/06800/06899a.tif- Original url: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.06899, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64460885
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