Nick Saban will enter the College Football Hall of Fame on Tuesday night for a coaching career that included 17 seasons, 11 SEC titles and six national championships at Alabama.
At a press conference before Tuesday night’s induction banquet for the Class of 2025, Saban shared three lessons that he learned “as a kid growing up in West Virginia pumping gas at my dad’s service station” that led him to the College Football Hall of Fame, which Saban termed an outcome “beyond my imagination.”
“Those lessons would lead me to a process of helping people develop their full potential – players, coaches” Saban said. “I always wanted to have a program to help people be more successful in life and reach their goals and aspirations. And those lessons that I learned as a kid growing up would develop a process that helped that.
“And you know, those lessons were real simple ones. You know, first of all, compassion for other people. You know, treat people like you’d like to be treated. Treat people nicely on the way up; you might meet them on the way down. It’s nice to be important; more important to be nice.
“The second thing was is regardless of what responsibility I was ever given as a kid, like washing a car, if there were any streaks left on that navy blue Buick, you had to do it over, so there was always a reckoning for what I did and that helped me tremendously, I think, from an accountability standpoint because my dad used to always say, ‘If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, how’re you going to find the time to do it again?’
“And the last thing was is we won an extraordinary amount of games when I was a pee-wee player and a high school player that culminated in a state championship. And after every one of those wins, I got my ass chewed out pretty good by my coaches and dad. And after all those wins, I finally asked my mom once, I said, ‘Why do I always seem to get reprimanded even when we win?’ And she said, ‘It’s not about winning. It’s about you being the best that you can be.’
“So those three lessons, you know, sort of helped me develop a process that helped a lot of other people be successful, helped us be successful, and helped the people that I work with give us a chance to successful. And I’d like to thank them for that.”
Saban is among the 18-player, four-coach Class of 2025 that will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame at the 67th annual National Football Foundation Awards Dinner on Tuesday at the Bellagio Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. ESPN+ will televise the event at 8:30 p.m. CST.
Saban retired after the 2023 season with an on-the-field record of 297-71-1 as a college football coach. Saban served as the head coach at Toledo in 1990, Michigan State from 1995 through 1999, LSU from 2000 through 2004 and Alabama from 2007 through 2023.
Saban guided seven national-championship winners. Saban produced the BCS national-championship team at LSU in 2003 and Alabama in 2009, 2011 and 2012 and the CFP national-championship team in 2015, 2017 and 2020 with the Crimson Tide.
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