Over the course of his legendary coaching career, Alabama’s Nick Saban has forgotten more football games than most people will ever know. Saban’s depth of knowledge and commitment to his craft is part of what has made him one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football, but it also prevents him from consuming the game in the way that the average viewer does — specifically, for entertainment.
During his weekly radio appearance, Saban admitted that he cannot enjoy football games when he simply sits down and watches them on television, explaining that he cannot take a step back from analyzing and managing each situation as if he was preparing his own Crimson Tide team for its next game.
“I really have a hard time enjoying the game, to be honest with you, when I watch it,” Saban said. “All the time that I spend, whether it’s watching a defensive team for our offensive preparation or the other team’s offense for the defense’s preparation — what you’re constantly looking for is what are the issues, what causes problems, what kind of adjustments do you have to make if we were playing against that? That’s all I do.
“I’ve got, like, 200 pages of formations that I go through on Sunday that are matched up with the film, so I write comments on every page about what kind of adjustments do we want to play? … So, when I watch a game on TV, I’m watching and I’m saying, ‘Well, how would we play that play? What would we do if they were in that formation and did that?’ I might as well go back to work.
“So it’s not really enjoyable, and then I find myself like at the end of the game saying, ‘Why didn’t they call timeout?’ … I’m like managing a game like we’re playing the game. So I’m like, ‘What can we watch on Netflix?'”
With football being Saban’s profession, the game has also become the source of his stress. And that stress has been greater in 2022, as Alabama has not been the usual juggernaut that it has long been in Saban’s tenure. While Alabama has an 8-2 record, it has lost two SEC games to Tennessee and LSU while also narrowly avoiding defeat against teams like Texas and Texas A&M.
Alabama is currently ranked No. 8 in the country, putting them well outside the College Football Playoff picture with just two games left in the regular season.
