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ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL: OHIO STATE v ALABAMADecember 30, 2014Nick SabanNEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA COACH SABAN: First of all, our team is‑‑ we're really proud of our team for the opportunity that they created for themselves to be here, to play against a very good Ohio State team who should be congratulated on their accomplishments for what they were able to do in their Big Ten and winning the championship and we're certainly pleased and proud of the progress our team worked to make this entire season so they created a great opportunity for themselves to be a part of the first sort of college football playoff. You know, it's always, if you're an SEC person, it's always a special treat to be able to be a part of the Sugar Bowl. The University of Alabama and the Sugar Bowl have a great tradition in history of this is our 14th appearance here and a lot of great tradition in all that for a lot of years. And the city of New Orleans and the people of the Sugar Bowl, we really appreciate their efforts and hospitality and how they treated us and it's been a good week for us. Q. What can you take from your previous matchups with Urban if anything? COACH SABAN: Well, I think that obviously they have a very good team, very good players. They're very well coached, which is nothing different from any other team that we've faced that Urban has coached, because he does a fantastic job with his players and coaches to put an outstanding product on the field. There are some similarities with what they do, especially offensively in terms of what they did when they were at the University of Florida, what he did. But they have different players. They do a great job of utilizing the talent and the players that they have. So on special teams and offense, there are some similarities. Probably not as much on defense. But we're playing against this team now. So we've tried to prepare based on what we need to do to play well against the players that they have and the system that they use right now, which is very effective and they've been very productive offensively, play very good defense, and I think very explosive and make a lot of plays on special teams, which is very typical of Urban Meyer‑coached teams. Q. We talked to Lane Kiffin yesterday and he gave you some credit for really wanting to bring a more up‑tempo, fast‑paced type of offense to your team. Can you kind of just talk about that? COACH SABAN: Well, I think that we try to do the same thing with our team and our players, relative to what we feel would be the most effective thing for them to do so that we can be productive. And I think that, systematically, for myself or for Lane, neither one of us had really ever been sort of an up‑tempo team. But being a defensive guy and knowing the issues and problems that this has created for what we have to face when we play up‑tempo teams, for the last season and this season, I've been wanting to move in that direction. And to Lane's credit, he was very open to trying to implement something that would be effective for our players and certainly did a really, really good job of implementing a system, and some of it was a little bit through trial and error for all of us that helped our players be productive and effective this season. And I think it worked out very well for the players that we have. Q. How do you‑‑ when you reflect on your playing career and college playing career how do you describe yourself as a player and what do you think from that experience informed the way you coach? COACH SABAN: It's been a long time since I was a player. I think that a lot of things that we do in our program is to try to help our players not only be good football players but sort of help them develop the kind of thoughts, habits, priorities, character, making good choices and decisions about what they do, that it's going to help them be a better person in life. And Don James was my college coach, and that philosophy carries over from when I was a player for him and his staff. And that's something that we've always tried to do in our program, emphasizing education and the value of education and learning how to be the best you can be at whatever you choose to do. And how to work with other people, togetherness, how to be positive, how to be responsible for your own self‑determination in terms of the choices and decisions that you make, and establishing the kind of work ethic that will help you be the best that you can be, well, these are all things that I learned when I was a player. And certainly things that we've tried to implement in our program through the years and hopefully we've helped some of our players not only be successful on the field but have a better opportunity to be more successful in life because of some of the principles and values they learn while they're in our program. I certainly think it was a benefit to me in terms of my college experience with the coaches and the philosophy that they have and I think it's something that's been helpful to us trying to establish a program that has value for players. Q. How do you feel like you've evolved, if that's the right word, as a head coach over the years, what are the important qualities you need in working with the staff, and in terms of just dealing with the university and the athletic department in general? COACH SABAN: I've been very fortunate, wherever I've been, that we've always had a great administration, whether it's great presidents, very good athletic directors, people who were really trying to serve and help us set the table for what we needed to do to be successful. And we have a great team in Alabama, but I felt the same way when I was at LSU, Michigan State or wherever we've had opportunities in the past. And so that part of it really has not been difficult, because of the quality of people that we've been fortunate to work with. I think as a head coach, probably the greatest thing that, or the biggest thing that you change or I've changed in is, just an overall understanding of human behavior and how people react the best. And it's not always being overly intense or trying to intimidate people into doing better or it's more about helping them sort of have a vision for what they want to accomplish and sell them on the process of what they need to do to accomplish it and sort of having the discipline on a day‑to‑day basis to try to carry it out, which is more the approach that we use with players and coaches and people that we have to work with. And I think if everybody has a similar vision for what they want to accomplish, it's certainly easier to get everybody to buy into the process of things that they need to do to do it and their dedication and determination to stick with that on a day‑to‑day basis, which is really about discipline to execute. Q. Between yourself and Coach Meyer the two have won six national titles over your career, how would you describe the relationship the two of you have built over the years? COACH SABAN: I didn't really know Urban all that well when he was at Florida. Mostly because I'm sure you've heard this story before, but when I was coaching at the Houston Oilers in'88,'89, whenever that was, and took the head coaching job at the University of Toledo, after the'89 season, my wife, Terry, who has always been very involved in what we do, and I was finishing the season with the Oilers, I wasn't paying a whole bunch of attention of what I was going to do when I was going to Toledo, trying to do a good job for the players we had. We had a playoff team. And Urban called. He was a graduate assistant somewhere. And Terry talked to him, and I came home one night after preparation for one of our games at the Oilers, and she said, You know, I talked to a really interesting guy today, Urban Meyer, and I really do think you should talk to him when you hire your staff at Toledo. And I was so kind of caught up and busy in what I was doing I never really followed up on that. And obviously that was a huge mistake on my part, because he's a fantastic coach and he's done a really, really good job. But we did have the opportunity to work one of the national championship games, I think it was the Auburn/Oregon game when Cam Newton was playing at Auburn, I guess that was 2010. So we spent three or four days together and really got to know him and his wife and really saw what a really good person he is and he's got a lot of really good qualities in terms of being a successful person at what he does and developed a tremendous amount of respect for him not just as a coach but as the kind of person that he is and a great work ethic that he has and how well organized he is in terms of his program. So it was no surprise to me that he got back into coaching a very good situation at Ohio State that has a great tradition and that it would not take him long to establish one of the top programs in the country, which he's certainly been able to do in a short period of time. Q. What's your reaction to Jim Harbaugh being hired at Michigan? We're getting a lot of questions, at least we are e‑mail‑wise, how much is a college football coach really worth having a salary maybe up to $8million a year, we'll see what happens, what's your reaction to that and explain‑‑ COACH SABAN: First of all, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Harbaugh family. I knew his dad when he was a secondary coach at Michigan and I was a secondary coach and we used to spend time together. So to see both of the Harbaughs do really, really well as NFL coaches in Baltimore and San Francisco, tremendous amount of respect for the entire family, and Tom Crean, who is the head basketball coach in Indiana, is married to another Harbaugh coach, which I'm sure she does a good job of supporting him just like my wife does me. And they were at Michigan State when we were there. He was an assistant for Tom Izzo, and we we're really good friends. So I've had a good relationship with the entire Harbaugh family for probably 30 years. So I'm happy and excited that someone of Jim Harbaugh's character and quality is going to come back and be a part of college football. And I'm sure he'll do a fantastic job at the University of Michigan, which has great tradition. And I know he'll do a really good job there. From the college football coach standpoint and the financial question that you asked me, the only thing that I can say to that is, what kind of value do you create for the university? If you create value for the university and you look at it from that standpoint, then I think that there's a relative amount that someone's worth based on that. And I don't really spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. So I really can't tell you exactly what that is or what it should be. But I think administrators probably have a better feel for that and have to make a determination as to what someone's worth relative to the value they create for their institution. Q. As you dug into Ohio State intensively and watched them on film, what, if anything, did you see or learn about them that you didn't notice on the surface? COACH SABAN: Well, we had not seen them all year long. And I think when you sort of play in these intersectional games where you're not sort of either watching them play or seeing the opponents that they play against throughout the season, when you start to look at someone, you really don't have sort of a perception of what you refer to as on the surface. And so you really start from scratch in terms of what they're tendencies are in terms of how they play offense, defense, special teams or whatever, and try to build a plan of what you think would be most effective and how you can get your players to adapt to what you do to sort of be most effective against that. So we see that they have very good players, very good skill guys on offense. Their offensive line have great balance, make a lot of big plays. They've been through a lot of adversity at the quarterback position but have overcome it very nicely in terms of every player they play at that position, because they've adapted to what he can do, has been very effective for them. Up front on defense, they're very physical and what makes defensive players good is they're hard to block. And they certainly have some guys up front that are hard to block and they played very well and have been difficult to score against. Create a lot of negative plays for people, and it's going to be very challenging for us up front with our offensive line to do a good job of executing against what they do. And they've always been a very good special teams, they've got good specialists, as well as they do a great job of coaching their teams, and they've created advantages for themselves on teams. So all around, this is a very, very good football team who played extremely well at the end of the season. Q. As you've seen your defense grow this year, how have you seen Reggie Ragland specifically evolve as a defensive player just in this season alone? COACH SABAN: Reggie has done, I think, an outstanding job for us all year long. He started the season as a guy who we knew had a lot of ability, a lot of talent and really hadn't played that much. So we knew there was a tremendous amount of upside there, and as he gained more knowledge and experience and confidence as a player that he would be more and more productive, which certainly is the way the season transpired for him.  Early on, you know, had some difficulties in terms of understanding exactly what the expectation was for him and his position, but sort of somewhere around the fourth or fifth game of the season you could see him develop more confidence in what that expectation was, and with that he started to make a lot of plays. And he's been one of our best playmakers on defense and been one of our most productive players and has become a really, really good player for us down the stretch. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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