FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The seniors on this Alabama team have no idea how easy they’ve had it under Nick Saban. After they won last year’s national championship as juniors, Saban waited an entire two days before beginning the process of breaking them down.
‘‘You are not national champions,’’ Saban said. “You played on a national championship team.’’
Think that was tough? When Saban won his first national title at Alabama in 2009, he called a full staff meeting for 10 a.m. the morning after the game to begin planning for 2010.
This is the Saban the public has come to know and begrudgingly respect, if not love.
But what if there is another side of Saban, one he protects with ferocity, more human than the automaton he trots out?
What if Saban, who will lead Alabama against Notre Dame tonight in the BCS Championship Game at Sun Life Stadium, is not Satan, as many have come to say?
What if he, like all of us, is a product of his upbringing — in Saban’s case, an upbringing that allowed little time for idle time and no room for imperfection?
“I started working at [my father’s] service station when I was 11 years old pumping gas,’’ Saban said. “But in those days”‘,”‘ notice I said it was a service station; it wasn’t a self-”‘serve. So you cleaned the windows, checked the oil, checked the tires, collected the money, gave the change, treated the customers in a certain way. We also greased cars, washed cars.
“So the biggest thing that I learned and started to learn at 11 years old was how important it was to do things correctly. There was a standard of excellence, a perfection. If we washed a car — and I hated the navy blue and black cars, because when you wiped them off, the streaks were hard to get out — and if there were any streaks when [his father] came, you had to do it over.’’
Nick Saban Sr. was known as Big Nick in Fairmont, W. Va., where Nicholas Lou Saban was born on Halloween, 1951.
In addition to running the service station and the Dairy Queen attached to it in Monongah, W. Va., Saban Sr. founded the town’s Pop Warner football program, refurbished an old school bus and used it to pick up kids around their coal-mining town, driving them to and from practice and games.
The elder Saban was such a taskmaster that at the end of practices, he had every player run a hill in the back of the end zone. There was one tree at the top of the hill so when it got dark, he insisted every player pull a leaf off the tree so he knew they ran the entire hill.
But he also gave the town bum free coffee and donuts every morning. And when his son sassed that bum, father took the strap to his 17-year-old son.
“It was the right thing,’’ Saban said. “I was disrespectful to an older person, regardless of his situation.’’
In Monongah, Saban was known as “Brother.” He has an older sister and when his mother was pregnant, Big Nick told everyone a brother was on the way.
“Brother” Saban and Big Nick had a steel bond based on tough love and hard work.
The devotion was so complete that when Big Nick died of a heart attack after a jog in 1972, Saban came home from his first grad assistant job at Kent State — where he played defensive back — and told his mother he was returning to run the service station.
Mary Saban said, “No.” They had not sent their son to college so he could be a grease monkey.
Saban continued his coaching journey. Love him, hate him, there is no denying he is the best college football coach of his time, winner of three national titles with a chance to become the first Alabama coach in the modern era to repeat.
At media day on Friday, Saban repeated his rote answers to every question, deflecting questions about himself by talking about his organization and the relentless pursuit of getting the best out of every player, every team.
Finally, 33 minutes and 48 seconds into his Q & A, Saban finally showed a human side. When pressed on how he keeps himself in shape and motivated, the 61-year-old coach talked about the pickup basketball games he plays with his staff.
“I’m the commissioner of the league,’’ he said. “It’s a noon basketball league NBA. I pick the teams so I have the best players on my team. I also pick the guy that can guard me. There are only two guys in the whole organization that are shorter, slower than I am. And then I call the fouls. So if you call that working out, I guess that’s my workout.’’
If the Tide wins tonight, the 2013 seniors know what awaits. Saban will put them on notice. There’s another title to be won, another car to be washed. No streaks allowed.