The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (79 page)

“Right now! Right now!” he screamed.

Meanwhile, along the outer edges of the field two more groups of about 30 players experienced wave after wave of commitment-testing sprints: Line up. Sprint a hundred and ten yards down one sideline. Walk the back line of the end zone. Line up. Sprint a hundred and ten yards down the other sideline. Walk the end zone. Line up …

All the while Saban stalked the field like a hungry cat.

“I’ve said it a hundred times today and nobody sprints,” he said to one group at one point, biting off each and every word. “So we’ll just have to start all over.”

So they did. More sprints. More drills. More taste of what it’s like to be part of The Process.

In the locker room celebration after the national championship game, Square had paid tribute to Cochran and the bond the Fourth Quarter program had built. “We ran together like brothers. ‘Coch’ worked us like crazy. That’s what jells you, man. You put in those hours with the guys. You’re out there running those one-tens; that’s what comes out in the fourth quarter. That’s what we’re thinking about when we’re coming out of the locker room. That training. That winter training. Getting up at 6:30 in the morning and getting a workout in. Coming back at 4:00 and running. Those are brutal days. But they are all for this moment.”

Yet in recent years the Built by Bama theme touted by the school’s marketing gurus had come to mean the mind as much as—or even more than—the body. This was another reflection of Saban’s gifts as a coach. Said defensive coordinator Smart, “To me that’s where he has established himself as a coach ahead of the curve because of his ability, mentally, to create an advantage with his team. And he makes us realize as coaches it’s not going to be about what we call, it’s not going to be about what we rep, it’s
about the mind-set in [a player’s] head that’s going to make the difference in this game.”

“I think it’s huge,” said Saban during his
60 Minutes
interview. “If you create a lot of anxiety because you’re a worrier, you’re not going to perform nearly as well … I think consistency in performance is what helps you to be successful. I think to get that consistency in performance in anything you do, the mental part is the key.”

Saban was asked how many consultants or coaches he had who focus on the mental side.

“As many as will put up with me,” he answered with a laugh. “ ’Cause, you know, I think that’s where it all starts. How you think is very important to how you act, the result that you get.”

Saban had at least half a dozen player development consultants on the payroll at any one time. Dr. Kevin Elko, a top motivational speaker, was one. Another was Trevor Moawad, the former director of performance and mental conditioning at IMG Academy in Florida now working with Athletes’ Performance in Arizona.

“There’s nobody even close to what Nick is doing,” said Moawad in the summer of 2012.

Moawad estimated that he had spent twenty-five hours a year for the last seven years consulting for Saban, dealing primarily with issues like visualization training and mental toughness.

“Performance is not just about movement, speed and strength,” he said. “Performance is about how you think, communicate and respond, all of these elements. And these elements can be taught.”

In addition, Saban regularly brought in a string of speakers to address the team. Some would talk about overcoming adversity or addiction; others, the power of belief and conviction; still others would deal with relationships, stress, personal growth and expectations. Moawad said the most intense sessions occurred during August training camp and that part of Saban’s genius was that he understood that no matter the skill set, he was inheriting vulnerable kids from various backgrounds. For those times when they made mistakes or poor decisions, as they invariably did, the safety net had to be strung as far and wide as possible.

Wes Neighbors knew full well the size of that net. He enrolled in Tuscaloosa as a third-generation member of certified Alabama football royalty. His grandfather Billy, who passed away after a heart attack in 2012, co-captained
Bear Bryant’s undefeated national championship team in 1961. A two-way star at guard and defensive line, he played eight seasons in the AFL and NFL with the Boston Patriots and the Miami Dolphins. In 2004 he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Wes Neighbors Sr. was next. A center, he played under Ray Perkins from 1983 to 1986 and was so good, like his father, he won the SEC’s award for best lineman. Wes junior started playing the family game in the seventh grade and quickly fell in love. By the time he graduated from Huntsville High in Alabama, he was an honorable mention all-state safety and ranked in the top twenty-five safeties in the country by ESPN.com. Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech offered scholarships. Then the Tide came calling. “I mean, this is where I wanted to go,” he said. “I’ve been going to games here since I was born.”

Rocked by the intensity of practice and long, grueling days, Neighbors, like so many freshmen, hit the wall early. At Alabama the average football day began at 6:15 a.m. and didn’t end until some fifteen hours later after a training table meal and two hours of tutoring and study hall. “I feel like I almost came in here blind because it is such a time commitment,” said Neighbors. “It does become your life.”

Neighbors admitted he had his “fair share of issues” his freshman and sophomore years—not the least of which was buying and drinking alcohol underage. “The program found out,” he said. “I had to face the consequences.” There was a sit-down in Saban’s office where they talked about decision making and whether Neighbors was willing to hold himself accountable for his actions and attend individual and group sessions with counselors. He was.

“It helped me a lot,” Neighbors said. “I wasn’t representing the football team as best I could. Some people don’t ever become aware. They don’t realize they’re representing their team and their university in a way that’s unacceptable.”

He redshirted as a freshman in 2008. In 2009 he didn’t play a down, serving solely on the scout team at practice. But by the time Neighbors was a redshirt sophomore—his junior year academically—the six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound defensive back was starting on every special team. Then, just a few days before the first game of the 2010 season, he tore the meniscus in his left knee in practice. He missed the first game. He played the next week against Penn State but felt a mysterious pain in his right foot that doctors eventually traced to an old fracture. The pain grew worse as the season wore on and limited Neighbors’s ability to cut. His role was reduced to straight-ahead kickoff coverage. At the end of the season he was
medically released from the team. In March 2011 he found himself back in Saban’s office for a different reason.

“We’ve always had a cordial relationship where I felt very comfortable talking to him about certain things,” Neighbors said. “It was pretty open. I just asked if there was any way to stay and help. And he was, ‘Of course, of course.’

“I knew I wanted to stay involved. Coach told me he thought I had great potential to be a coach someday. So I was allowed to come in as a student assistant.”

Saban believed that if you invest—honestly and truthfully
invest
—in building a better person—whether it’s Wes Neighbors or stars like McCarron and Amari Cooper—you end up with athletes who, in times of intense stress, embrace the moment rather than run from it. “The mental game can’t win it for you, but it can lose it for you,” said Moawad. “It’s a 5 to 6 percent difference, and at this level that’s big.”

Saban seemed to understand better than any other coach of his generation the razor-thin difference 5 or 6 plays could make during a 135-play game. The Process was built for those defining plays—for times when trained leaders stepped forward and rallied the troops and an entire team displayed the ability to perform at its best.

Nowhere was that 5 percent factor more evident than in the 2012 SEC Championship game in Atlanta. The game was a spectacular sixty-minute slugfest between two jacked-up, athletically gifted teams. No. 2–ranked Alabama beat No. 3 Georgia 32–28. But only after the Bulldogs, led by quarterback Aaron Murray, playing the game of his SEC life, came up just five yards short with four seconds left on the clock.

With six and a half minutes left in the third quarter, ’Bama had found itself down 21–10 after a seventy-five-yard Georgia touchdown drive and a fifty-five-yard Bulldogs TD run off a blocked field goal. The hometown crowd in the Georgia Dome was in a frenzy. On the sidelines, Smart said later he wondered if the Tide had what it would take to come back in the Bulldogs’ backyard. “I was questioning it,” he admitted. “You’re sitting there going, Well, here we go. This is another challenge to our competitive character. Are we going to be able to get the stops and get the scores necessary to bring it back?”

Lock in, lock out. Control what you can control. Play the play. Be the best you can be
. You could almost hear all the mental mantras and collective
suffering of the Fourth Quarter program at work. And sure enough, the Crimson Tide responded as one.

The offensive line just kept coming, stuffing the ball down the throat of a stout Georgia defense that had allowed only nineteen total points in its last three SEC games. Freshman tailback sensation T. J. Yeldon finished off a penalty-aided seventy-seven-yard, four-play drive with a ten-yard scamper for a score. The two-point conversion made it 21–18. ’Bama quickly got the ball back on downs, and this time it was Lacy and the line pounding away for the go-ahead touchdown. Score: 25–21 with 14:57 to go.

Georgia roared back with a TD of its own—28–25 now, 12:54 left in the game. Once more Alabama ditched the pass and doubled down on the run. Facing a make-or-break third and five with 4:01 left, Yeldon slammed through a hole and into a tackler, crashing forward for a crucial first down. Then, with the Bulldog safeties crowding the line of scrimmage, quarterback McCarron lofted a perfect pass to Cooper for forty-four yards and what turned out to be the game-winning score.

In the end, Alabama had rushed fifty-one times for a championship game record of 350 yards. Afterward, Saban spoke of having to restart his heart. He spoke of a team that would not be denied. With a shot at the national championship on the line, his team had been the best that it could be.

“The thing about the whole process is, The Process leads to success,” said Neighbors. “You’ve just got to get people to see it. And once they see it, they start believing it. And once they believe, you have nowhere to go but [to] that success.”

After reaching the pinnacle of such success—the merciless 42–14 demolition of Notre Dame in the BCS title game—a word unavoidably arose among players and the press. Saban swatted it away like a gnat. “I don’t think words like ‘dynasty’ are really words I’m much interested in,” he said. He would celebrate for twenty-four hours and not an hour more. The championship ring would join the others on his office coffee table for recruits to see.

“ ‘Look what I got’—that’s not my style,” he said.

The national championship victory had touched off a wild on-field celebration. There were hugs and kisses and handshakes as a scene unique in sports unfolded like a thousand New Year’s Eves in one. Suddenly there was Saban, surrounded by security, scanning the crowd until he found the person he was searching for—his wife, Ms. Terry. Hand in hand, they walked up the stairs onto the makeshift stage.

Addressing a roaring crowd, Saban spoke of what a great win it was for the “organization,” admitting to ESPN’s John Saunders that it was okay now for his players to talk about repeats because, well, they’d just repeated. Linebacker C. J. Mosley was next. Saban shifted off to the side. Head slightly down, he nibbled on a nail. One could only wonder what was going on inside his head. The slippery night of player partying to come? Future expectations?

Then someone handed him the gorgeous glass football, which twinkled in the metal halide lights. As he hoisted the trophy above his head, a small, contented smile crossed his face. “Sweet Home Alabama” poured out of the stadium speakers. The crowd chanted “Roll, Tide, Roll!” in perfect unison at just the right opening, as if those words were part of the song.