I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.

Nick Saban

Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people.

Nick Saban

One thing about championship teams is that they're resilient. No matter what is thrown at them, no matter how deep the hole, they find a way to bounce back and overcome adversity.

Nick Saban

One thing I always tell players is that there are three bad things: Nothing good happens after midnight, nothing good happens when you're around guns unless you're going hunting, and you don't want to mess around with women that you don't know because a lot of times, bad things happen.

Nick Saban

When you invest your time, you make a goal and a decision of something that you want to accomplish. Whether it's make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who's in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you're investing your time in that.

Nick Saban

We all have anxiety about things. We all have little insecurities, but eventually you have to face your fears if you want to be successful, and everybody has some fear of failure.

Nick Saban

Now, everybody always says there's no 'I' in team, but there is an 'I' in win, because the individuals make the team what it is, and how they think and what they do is important to the team. So when you act like the individual is not important, well, it is damn important who these people are and what they are.

Nick Saban

When you have the ability to affect other people and be somebody that somebody wants to emulate, care enough to help somebody else for their benefit, that's what makes you a good teammate, and that's what everybody's looking for.

Nick Saban

Honesty and integrity is an important part of our character, my character.

Nick Saban

What makes Freddy Krueger such a horrible character? What makes him scare you to death? You can't get rid of the guy. He never goes away.

Nick Saban

We create a standard for how we want to do things, and everybody's got to buy into that standard or you really can't have any team chemistry.

Nick Saban

I always ask myself the question, do you like to win, or do you hate to lose?

Nick Saban

You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It's hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football. You can't keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren't always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.

Nick Saban

I think when you win the national championship, it works throughout your team. Where human nature is to say, I did well. I got my quota this month. Now do I get some time off? Do I get a bonus? Do I get to go on a cruise? But it's not to keep trying to be the best. That's not necessarily human nature.

Nick Saban

I don't know if I'm different from everybody else, but there's really only two things to me that are really, really important - recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.

Nick Saban

I think people who grow up in one particular environment, like the Alabama-Auburn game, they don't ever get the same appreciation for the Ohio State-Michigan game or the Michigan State-Notre Dame game or the Michigan-Michigan State game, the Browns and the Steelers.

Nick Saban

One of these days when I'm finished coaching at Alabama, I'll write an authorized book because there's only one expert on my life, and guess who that is... me. And there won't be any misinformation. There won't be any false statements. There won't be any hearsay. There won't be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.

Nick Saban

If you're a coach, you're a teacher.

Nick Saban

There's two parts of leadership. You've got to be a good leader - you've got to be somebody that people want to emulate and care about the other people. But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That's the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.

Nick Saban

I think a lot of times you have to face your fears. I think everybody has to face their fears.

Nick Saban

When you have a system, you kind of get in a routine of what's important. And then you spend a lot more time on thinking of things that would make it better.

Nick Saban