Alabama Football: Nick on Clemson loss and NCAA Early Signing Day

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Alabama football under Saban can never rest. There is always a new mountain to climb. Nick reflects on the Clemson loss and NCAA rules changes.

On Wednesday, Alabama football coach Nick Saban teed it up with Steve Stricker in the Regions Tradition Pro-Am. Dennis Dodd of cbspsorts.com  began a recent interview by getting Nick to talk some golf. Saban had recently played Augusta National and Dodd asked Nick about the round.

Note: the quote below and all of the quotes in this post are from the conversation between Dodd and Saban.

"“I actually made two birdies, but I also made probably made six double bogeys … I go over there once a year … You gotta be good to play over there. You hit a bad shot, you pay the consequences for it.” Saban’s consequences resulted in a score of “88 or something.”"

Very few golfers who cannot practice and play year-round can break 100 at Augusta National. Many frequent golfers struggle to do so as well. An 88, by a 65-year-old man, who can only play golf about four months a year is impressive.

If you have never seen Nick hit a golf shot, check this out:

Maybe because of the golf chat, maybe because it is the offseason, Saban was reflective when Dodd moved the conversation to football. The two discussed last season’s championship game loss and the new NCAA early signing period.

Saban acknowledged to Dodd that he can get a little “crazy” talking about the NCAA changes. Sports columnists relish the opportunity to write about Saban whenever he goes into one of trademark rants. With Dodd, there were no Saban rants and his comments were not the least bit crazy.

Nick’s thoughts on the Clemson game:

"“Our teams that win always have tremendous ownership, tremendous togetherness … But sort of the litmus test is what happens from the SEC Championship Game until you play in the playoff games. Last year, we didn’t seem to have everybody in the organization who had that ownership and togetherness like we’d had all season long.”"

That statement appeared to be aimed directly at Lane Kiffin. If it was, Saban did not dwell on it. He moved quickly to the defensive failure to stop Clemson.

"“People want to make a lot of excuses for what happened in the game. The fact of the matter is we didn’t stop them when we needed to. We had a lead. I felt like we had a lot of good players on defense. From my standpoint, we didn’t do enough to help them.”"

When Saban said “we didn’t do enough,” he means the defensive coaching staff and himself. No doubt, Nick Saban was not pleased with the negative impact caused by Lane Kiffin’s exit from Alabama. It would be normal human nature to mostly blame Kiffin for the loss. To Saban’s credit, he understands there is plenty of blame to be shared, beginning with himself.

Saban did discuss the offense somewhat, but mostly to elaborate on the direction the team is moving with Brian Daboll as offensive coordinator. Talking about Daboll who was a graduate assistant for Saban at Michigan State:

"“We had four pretty good GAs back then — Josh McDaniels, Brian Daboll, Mel Tucker and Adam Gase. I like Brian. He’s a hard worker. He kind of came up the hard way in the profession … every year the last three years we always had a pro-style element … Each year we got a little further away from that when it came to passing … I wanted to make sure we got somebody in here to make us stronger in that part of the game."