Nick Saban has a full mantle of trophies to show for the endless hours he puts into his job as the Alabama Crimson Tide’s head coach.
Four national championships, one at LSU and three with Alabama. Four SEC titles, half split from his times at Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa. Two times the national coach of the year. The top ranked recruiting class in the country year after year.
So what does South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Steve Spurrier think Saban should do?
"“I told Nick Saban one time, I said, ‘Nick, you don’t have to stay there until midnight and your teams would be just as good and win just as many’…He said, ‘If I could do it the way you do it, I would, but I don’t feel comfortable unless I try to cover every base, every angle, be totally prepared.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s probably why you do it.’”"
Now, Spurrier and Saban are two different coaches. One is perennially quotable, living off tweaking his fellow conference coaches and beating them quite often on the football field. The other is more cut from the cloth of Bill Belichick, at times short with the media and almost always taking a business-as-usual approach to his craft.
It sounds like OBC appreciates the job Saban’s done thus far. Will they finally meet in the SEC Championship this season? Time will tell.