Nick Saban and the Evolution of a Coach
Arguably the greatest coach of all time announced his retirement recently. Nick Saban, the longtime coach of Alabama football, has retired. His ability to sustain success and adapt over time is remarkable. Ironically, I finished reading a book about his leadership the day the retirement was announced. The book was “The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama’s Coach Became the Greatest Ever” by John Tally. It is a great read on Saban’s approach and some fundamental leadership principles. While the title provocatively says “secrets”, there is nothing in there that is a secret. Hard work, relationships, consistency, etc.…. We may write more about the book at a later time but the piece I want to highlight is how he was able to adapt over time.
The evolution of a coach is an interesting process and inexact science. Broadly speaking, what we see is that coaches tend to learn a lot early in their career but think they know more than they do. Then, on the backside of the career, while most know a lot, they fail to stay current and adapt over time. The graph below illustrates this.
However, there are the rare few that somehow are at their best at the end of their career. Nick Saban was one of those. The book highlights how he would challenge himself to change and hire people that could help him do that. An example of this discussed in the book was his offensive evolution. Saban was highly critical of the move toward no huddle offenses and the increased speed of the game. He was vocal about his opposition and was criticized for it. However, he saw it was here to stay and totally changed his offensive scheme and recruited different players to accomplish this. He event went out and hired a coach, Lane Kiffin, who was the opposite of him in about every way---on and off the field. Shortly thereafter, they were one of the best offenses in the country and were beating people at their own game. While he did not want to change, once he saw the need, he did it and was all-in. Sounds easy in some ways when reading this I am sure----but extraordinarily difficult in practice.
Compare and contrast this to the end of Bill Belichick’s time in New England. He has seemed to fail to adapt and have several rough seasons before he parted way with the Patriots. It is interesting how some can adapt, and some can’t. Colin Cowherd has an interesting discussion comparing Saban to Belichick at this link.
One practical takeaway from this is to be curious and become a learner early in your career so you make adapting just part of your process. This takes a great deal of discipline, humility, and effort but pull off but well worth it for long term success.